The Rural Economy and Society in North-Western Europe, 500-2000: The Agro-Food Market - Production, Distribution, and Consumption 9782503530482, 2503530486

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Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000 The Agro-Food Market: Production, Distribution and Consumption

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000 General editorial board: Erik Thoen (Director) (Ghent University) Eric Vanhaute (Ghent University) Leen Van Molle (University of Leuven) Yves Segers (University of Leuven) Bas van Bavel (Utrecht University)

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000

The Agro-Food Market: Production, Distribution and Consumption Edited by Leen Van Molle and Yves Segers

in association with John Chartres, Marc de Ferrière le Vayer, Pim Kooij, Michael ­Kopsidis, Bjørn Poulsen and Jean-Pierre Williot

H F

Cover illustrations Top illustration: Farmers and farming women going by ‘peasant tram’ to the market, photo by Joseph Casier (1852–1925), taken in Oudenaarde (Flanders, Belgium) in 1899. KADOC-KU Leuven. Bottom illustration: Cart, driver and four draught animals, drawing in the ‘Veil rentier’, an inventory of the estates of the lord of Pamele (Oudenaarde, Flanders, Belgium) written around 1275. Royal Library of Brussels, Ms 1175, f. 14. Illustration on the back: Women selling eggs, drawing in the ‘Veil rentier’, an inventory of the estates of the lord of Pamele (Oudenaarde, Flanders, Belgium) written around 1275. Royal Library of Brussels, Ms 1175, f. 59. © 2013 Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN 978-2-503-53048-2 D/2013/0095/55

CONTENTS

List of illustrations

vii

List of maps

xii

List of tables and figures

xiii

Series introduction

xv

Contributors xx 1.

Introduction: the agro-food market around the North Sea, 500–2000 Leen Van Molle and Yves Segers 1

2. Agricultural production, distribution and consumption around the North Sea, 500–1000 Jean-Pierre Devroey, Alexis Wilkin and Alban Gautier 13

British Isles 3. British Isles, 1000–1750 John Chartres 69 4. British Isles, 1750–2000 John Chartres 99

Northern France 5. Northern France, 1000–1750 Florent Quellier

135

6. Northern France, 1750–2000 Marc de Ferrière le Vayer and Jean-Pierre Williot

165

The Low Countries 7. The Low Countries, 1000–1750 Reinoud Vermoesen

199

8. The Low Countries, 1750–2000 Yves Segers, Leen Van Molle, Pim Kooij, and Jan Bieleman

225

v

Contents

North-west Germany   9. North-west Germany, 1000–1750 Michael Kopsidis and Klaus-Joachim Lorenzen-Schmidt

261

10. North-west Germany, 1750–2000 Michael Kopsidis

293

Scandinavia 11. Scandinavia, 1000–1750 Bjørn Poulsen

331

12. Scandinavia, 1750–2000 Søren Bitsch Christensen, Hilde Sandvik and Mogens R. Nissen

365

13. Conclusion: the dynamics of the agro-food chain in the North Sea Area, 500–2000 Yves Segers and Leen Van Molle

403

vi

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

500–1000 2.1 Planting vines, c. 820–830, as depicted in the Stuttgarter Psalter, Saint-Germain-des-Prés  © Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Stuttgart, Cod. bibl. fol. 23, f. 96v. 2.2 Pair of scales from the Vikings, Gotland, 10th or 11th century © Trustees of the British Museum, nr 1921, 1101.321 2.3 Feasting in late Anglo-Saxon England, second quarter of the 11th century, from an illustrated translation into Old English of the Book of Genesis, Canterbury  © The British Library Board, British Library, ms Cotton Claudius B iv, f. 63v. 2.4 The payment of dues, c. 820–830, as depicted in the Stuttgarter Psalter, Saint-Germain-des-Prés  © Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Stuttgart, Cod. bibl. fol. 23, f. 97v.

12

29

35

49

Britain 1000–1750 3.1 Covent Garden piazza and market, 1771–1780, oil painting on canvas by John Collet © Museum of London

68

3.2 A wayside alehouse, c. 1330, as depicted in a manuscript © The British Library Board, Royal Mss, 10 E iv, f. 114v.

82

3.3 The Mapp of Lubberland, c. 1670, engraving  © Trustees of the British Museum, nr 1953, 0411.69

87

3.4 Tin-glazed Delft pottery, 17th and 18th century  © Canterbury Archeological Trust Ltd.

89

Britain 1750–2000 4.1 A girl going to market, c. 1800, engraving after Thomas Barker of Bath. Print made by Thomas Gaugain, published by Gaetano Testolini  © Trustees of the British Museum, nr 1877, 0609.1681

98

vii

List of illustrations

4.2 ‘Royal Wilts’, 8 January 1908, advertisement for the Wiltshire Bacon Curing Company Ltd. of Chippenham © The National Archives (UK), nr copy1/265 (336)

108

4.3 Design of the covered retail market of Weymouth, 1811–1877, pen and brown ink with watercolour and bodycolour on paper  © Trustees of the British Museum, nr 1877, 0609.352

111

4.4 Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Co., c. 1870–1900, chromolithographed trade card, printed by R. Ganton, London  © American Antiquarian Society

117

4.5 A group of assistants, all workers at the Home & Colonial Store on 10 Broad Street, Waterford, May 1910, photographic negative glass  © National Archives of Ireland, NLI, P WP 2028

121

Northern France 1000–1750 5.1 Feast of William the Conqueror with his half-brother, bishop Odo, blessing food and beverages, late 11th century, Bayeux tapestry  © Wikimedia

134

5.2 A fish market on a quay, a woman buying eels from a stall, c. 1648–1664, pen and grey ink and grey wash on paper by Albert Flamen © Trustees of the British Museum, nr 1836, 0811.280

143

5.3 Frontispiece of Nicolas de Bonnefons, Les délices de la campagne, Paris, 1654 5.4 Five Senses. Le Goust (The taste), c. 1678–1700, engraving after Robert Bonnart. Published by Henri II Bonnart © Trustees of the British Museum, nr 1922, 0410.170

148 158

Northern France 1750–2000 6.1 La plantation mécanique des pommes de terre sélectionnées (mechanical planting of selected potatoes), cover page of Rustica: Journal universel de la campagne, 12 March 1951

164

6.2 La Place des Halles (the Halles market in Paris), 1759, engraving  © Trustees of the British Museum, nr 1871, 1209.1051

170

6.3 The potato market at Saint-Malo, c. 1900, postcard  © private collection

176

6.4 Clock auction, 1960’s, Saint Pol de Léon © Sica de Saint Pol de Léon, Archives Sica

183

viii

List of illustrations

6.5 Package of demi-Camembert L’Hôtesse, late 1950s–1960s, printed by Garnaud at Angoulême for the Laiterie Coopérative de Reignac en Touraine (Indre-et-Loire)  © Camembert Museum

191

Low Countries 1000–1750 7.1 The month June in his book of hours, c. 1530, Bruges, miniature by Simon Bening © München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod. lat. 23638, f. 8v.

198

7.2 The discovery of the potato, oldest European image of the plant, 1588, aquarel by an unknown master as an illustration to the scientific description by Carolus Clusius in his Rariorum plantarum historia © Museum Plantin-Moretus Print Room, Antwerp

205

7.3 Market scene, c. 1550, oil painting on oak by Pieter Aertsen © Alte Pinakothek, München/bpk 7.4 ‘Om een lecker beetken int vleeschuys te cryghen’ (Looking for a nice bite in the meat house), second half 16th century, engraving by P. vander Borcht © Atlas van Stolk, Rotterdam

214

218

Low Countries 1750–2000 8.1 Cattle market at Pulmerend, 1896–1905, tableau of tiles after a painting by A.L.G. ‘Tony’ Offermans  © Nederlands Tegelmuseum Otterlo, the Netherlands

224

8.2 Beurré Chaboceau, colloquialy known as Jefkespeer, lithography by P. De Pannemaeker as depicted in the Bulletin d’arboriculture, de culture potagère et de floriculture, 1 April 1878, Ghent © Center for Agrarian History, Leuven

231

8.3 Export of butter and pork on the ship Heron on its weekly crossing from the port of Harlingen to London, c. 1925, photograph  © Gemeentemuseum Het Hannemahuis, Harlingen

237

8.4 Back cover of the undated recipe folder Les recettes de Marie Thumas for the promotion of a canned food factory with the same name, established in Leuven in 1886, image after Draeger, Paris © Center for Agrarian History, Leuven

241

8.5 The International Fair for Motorized Agriculture in Brussels, 1957, poster246 © Collection Agribex, KADOC – KU Leuven

ix

List of illustrations

North-west Germany 1000–1750   9.1 Geschlachtetes Schwein (slaughtered pig), 1563, painting by Joachim Beuckelaer  © bpk/Lutz Braun Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Köln, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum - Fondation Corboud, Sammlung Hermann Neuerburg, nr WRM 2324

260

  9.2 Harvest of acorns for pig fattening, c. 1510–1520, illustration for the month November in the Breviarium Grimani, miniature © bpk/Hermann Buresch

280

  9.3 Cattle market and market court, 1497, from a manuscript with the municipal law of Hamburg, miniature  © bpk

284

  9.4 Drinkers, 1524, woodcut, title page of Johann von Schwarzenberg, Vonn zutrincken Laster unnd myssbrauch dye schendlichen darauss Erfolgen, Damit jetz dye gantz Teutsch Nation befleckt ist, Zwickaw, 1524

289

North-west Germany 1750–2000 10.1 Gemischtwarenhandlung (a grocery) in the Westphalian village Schonnebeck, 1908, photograph  © bpk 10.2 Grain market at Unna Kamen, Westphalen, 1871, photo taken by Fred Kaspar  © Volkskundige Kommission für Westfalen, Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe, nr 0000.69696 10.3 British military authorities distributing food to the German civilian population in Hamburg, March 1945, photo © bpk 10.4 Slaughterhouse in Flensburg, Germany, c. 1950, photo  © Arkivet ved Dansk Centralbibliotek for Sydslesvig

292

300

319 323

Scandinavia 1000–1750 11.1 Sowing and harvesting, c. 1450–1480, fresco in the church of Reerslev, Denmark  © Afdeling for Middelalder- og Renæssancearkælogi, University of Aarhus

x

330

List of illustrations

11.2 Provianthuset (warehouse with provisions for the royal fleet and army, in Copenhagen), 1611, detail from copper engraving by Jan Diricksen, after a painting by Johannes van Wijck © Royal Danish Library

339

11.3 St. Joseph shown as peasant, tasting porridge from a metal pot on an open fire, c. 1500, fresco in the church of Elmelunde, Denmark  © Afdeling for Middelalder- og Renæssancearkælogi, University of Aarhus

349

11.4 View of Bergen, c. 1580, engraving by Hieronymus Scholeus in the Braun/Hogenberg Civitates Orbis Terrarum359 © Wikimedia Scandinavia 1750–2000 12.1 Cattle in the streets of Ribe, Denmark, c. 1910, photo  © Stender Collection at University of Southern Denmark, Esbjerg 12.2 Livestock market in Randers, Jutland, 1861, printed from an engraving in wood in Illustreret Tidende, nr 110, 3 November 1861  12.3 Alfa-Laval cream separators, Stockholm, 1900, cover of a publicity folder in German  © Zuivelmuseum Blankenberge 12.4 The customs walls in Europe, a caricature from the Danish satyrical yearbook Blæksprutten, 1931

364

379 387

391

xi

LIST OF MAPS*

*

xii

  2 The North Sea area, 500–1000

14

  3 British Isles, 1000–1750

70

  4 British Isles, 1750–2000

100

  5 Northern France, 1000–1750

136

  6 Northern France, 1750–2000

166

  7 The Low Countries, 1000–1750

200

  8 The Low Countries, 1750–2000

226

  9 North-west Germany, 1000–1750

262

10 North-west Germany, 1750–2000

294

11 Scandinavia, 1000–1750

332

12 Scandinavia, 1750–2000

366

The maps are only intended to clarify the text. They roughly locate the most important placenames mentioned in the chapters.

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

  2.1 Composition of peasant holdings at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, early ninth century

26

  2.2 Proportion of seigniorial lands and tenures benefiting from a mill within a radius of 10 kilometres, ninth century

31

  4.1 Numbers of large towns and urban share of total population, British Isles and Low Countries, 1750–1890

101

  4.2 UK gross imports of cereal, potatoes and flour, 1854–1914

114

  4.3 UK gross imports of livestock, meat, and livestock products, 1854–1914

116

  7.1 Share of produce in the Land of Aalst, inland Flanders, 1680–1790

204

  7.2 Shares of total expenditure on food: Antwerp, mid-eighteenth century220   8.1 Structure of agricultural production in Belgium and the Netherlands, 1880–1950 

236

12.1 Cereal harvest output factor in the Kingdom of Denmark, c. 1750–1865

374

12.2 Grain exports from Denmark to Norway and other countries, from 1730–40 to 1843–47

376

12.3 Full-time employees in Danish agriculture, 1950–2007

394

12.4 Full-time farmers in Danish agriculture, 1950–2007

395

xiii

series Introduction

A new rural history of north-western Europe This book is the third of a four-volume series dealing with the long-term evolution of rural society in north-western Europe from the early middle ages until the end of the twentieth century. In this series an international team of researchers explains how the people of the countries surrounding the North Sea organized agricultural production and trade, and how the rural economy and society of these countries was repeatedly transformed, through periods of shortfall and plenty, poverty and wealth, over the 1500 years between 500 and 2000. The comparative and long-term approach of the series reveals processes of convergence and divergence, stagnation and change. The impact of rural societies on economic and social development cannot be underestimated. Until the nineteenth century, western European economies remained overwhelmingly agricultural. Wealth and political power were normally measured in land. Elite life in the countryside frequently provided the aspirational cultural norm. The development of the industrial world was in many ways closely related to changes in the countryside. It is therefore all the more surprising that syntheses of the history of European agriculture and rural society are so few and far between. The past few decades have seen an enormous increase in our knowledge and understanding of European rural societies and economies, but most of what has been written in that time has been limited by the borders of a single modern state (as, for example, the multi-volume rural histories of England, France and Sweden). The exception was the pioneering (but now dated) book by B. H. Slicher van Bath, The agrarian history of Western Europe, A.D. 500–1850, first published in Dutch in 1960. Van Bath covered more or less the same area as is dealt with in this series, and adopted a similar comparative and long-term approach, although limited to the period before 1850 and focussing mainly on agriculture from a technical and ‘traditional’ productivist point of view. He was less concerned with such social and structural aspects of the rural society as family structures, property and power relations and the relationships of markets and consumers. Van Bath’s synthesis was undoubtedly a brilliant and enduring piece of writing, but today, a single-authored synthesis seems an almost impossible task. For this reason, our series is the result of the pooled effort of more than 70 specialists in the field. Our aim is to bring a new and comprehensive narrative reflecting many new scholarly interpretations, showing the slow unfolding of Europe’s rural history and the deep historical roots of the rural economies and societies of the present day to a new readership of undergraduates, graduates, the general public and, importantly, policy makers in government and non-governmental organizations.

xv

Series introduction

The features of the series The approach of the four volumes is not a ‘classical’ chronological one, but is thematic, which enables us to focus on developments in rural areas from four crucial and interrelated perspectives, namely: land use and productivity; production, distribution and consumption; family formation, income and labour; and finally property and power relations. This thematic structure combines three main features. First, it links important research results revealing the macro-economic trends with studies focussing on the regional and local levels. By doing so, the rural producers themselves come to the fore, and we see their constant struggle with environmental and structural limits to which they responded by adapting their production, family and market strategies. Even within geographical and political boundaries, differences between regions and interregional comparisons are, when and where possible, taken into account. Secondly, each volume presents a long-term view. In order to gain an insight into the origins of the north-western European society of today, it is necessary to go as far back as the Early Middle Ages. It was this period (and not the ‘Pirennean’ watershed of the year 1000) that marked the start of a new European society, at least and especially in the North Sea area, with the fundamental break with the economic, social and ­political structures of the Roman period. Third, the main focus of each volume is on the evolution of the ways in which the inhabitants of the countryside managed to produce food for themselves, for local and distant markets, and for different tables and tastes. This is analysed from the four differ­ ent angles we outlined above. Each volume can be read on its own, as a meaningful narrative from one particular point of view within an all-encompassing rural history.

Four volumes, four themes The series is structured around the four themes of land use and productivity; production, distribution and consumption; family formation, income and labour; and finally property and power relations. This volume on The Agro-food market: Production, Distribution and Consumption aims at unravelling the changing character of the agro-food chain, from the field to the table. The path from a self-supporting way of life to the present complex forms of market integration in the global world was far from uniform and linear. This volume explores how food production, market structures and market mechanisms changed over time and differed between regions and countries within the North Sea area. Social Relations: Property and Power, published in 2010, deals with the importance of property structures over land and the question of who controlled and secured the income derived from land and the profits of farming. This is a complex question to pose because the land has been subjected to competing claims, varying from region to region: claims from the peasants themselves, claims from different landowning classes and from the central government. Likewise, landowners, the church and government all struggled to secure their share of the farmer’s profits – except now, of course, the state subsidizes agriculture rather than the other way round. This volume also looks xvi

Series introduction

at the interaction between society and external changes, such as the rise and fall of the market, trends in population and European integration. The volume on Making a living: Family, Income and Labour that came out in 2011 deals with the interaction between production, reproduction and labour in rural societies. It investigates the ways in which resources became available to the rural family and its members, and the strategies which were employed to generate these resources. Its goal is to interpret the regional and chronological diversity of household formation and the economic behaviour of its members in relation to labour organization. In the final volume Struggling with the Environment: Land Use and Production we consider how, when, to what degree and within what structural boundaries land was used for agriculture. The book focuses on the evolution of land use: why and how was land reclaimed and used? Which actors played a part in this process? What were the environmental and social limits of cultivation, and how did these alter with changes in climate, market demand and technical innovation? Production techniques and production systems are scrutinized especially in the light of alleged ‘agricultural’ and ‘green’ revolutions.

The extent of  ‘the North Sea area’ As mentioned, in this book series an international team has collaborated in order to explain how people in the countryside surrounding the North Sea organised rural production. Taking the North Sea area as our research area is easy to defend. First, the area shows many similar features which run over the borders of nations. Like the Mediterranean, the North Sea can be considered as a unity. The countries and regions surrounding it share several physical geographic characteristics. The whole area enjoys a moderate maritime climate and it mostly consists of lowlands with some low mountain ranges. In most of the area, agriculture is dominated by middling and large holdings. Secondly, the area is an economic and cultural unity because of the strong commercial relations between the countries bordering on the North Sea, enabled by easy and inexpensive transportation. People, technology and ideas travelled smoothly over the North Sea. Over the past millennium and a half, the countries connected by it have progressed from being a periphery of the Mediterranean world to forming the core of the modern world economy. Parts of the North Sea area have played an key role in European economic history. Flanders and Brabant were among the most developed regions in Europe in the Middle Ages. The Dutch Republic was the leading economic power in Europe in the seventeenth century, Britain from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. The industrial revolution began in Britain and was followed by Belgium. From an early date, these areas not only had a highly developed trade and industry, but also a highly developed and commercialized agriculture. It was this which enabled these countries to escape the Malthusian trap of population outrunning food supplies at an early date.

xvii

Series introduction

The North Sea area includes a variety of landscapes with different rural histories: from regions with a long tradition of extensive agriculture to areas where intensive husbandry was already established in the Middle Ages; from regions where low labour productivity lasted until the late nineteenth century to areas where it was replaced at an early date by labour efficient production systems. But because of the intense contacts between regions along the North Sea littoral, prosperous regions gradually influenced the development of agriculture in more backward areas. And because of common characteristics in their agriculture and transport facilities, the countries around the North Sea often were competitors (for instance Denmark and the Netherlands, both trying to sell their butter to the British market in the nineteenth century). This makes the North Sea area a very rewarding one to study from a comparative perspective. Some practical choices had to be made in order to determine the borders of the area under consideration. Included within our scheme are the following regions: the Low Countries (Belgium and the Netherlands); England, Wales and Scotland (Ireland, further away from the North Sea, is taken into account in particular cases, for instance its market relations with the other areas around the North Sea); Denmark and the southern coastal areas of Sweden and Norway; north-west Germany, defined as the states of Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and North RhineWestphalia, all belonging to the ‘Norddeutsche Tiefebene’ and north-western France, defined as the area north of the Loire river, stretching from Brittany in the west to the Vosges in the east, including Berry and a part of Burgundy in the south, the core of which is formed by Brittany, Picardy, Normandy and Ile-de-France.

Structure of each volume Each volume is structured along a combination of chronological, regional, and comparative lines. Both the introduction and the concluding final chapter of each book, written by the volume editors, offer the comparative perspective. The Early Middle Ages (500–1000), a period that is characterised by the scarcity of source material, is the object of a separate chapter, followed by chapters that deal with the different regions under consideration (north-western France, Britain, the Low Countries, north-west Germany and Scandinavia) during a specific time span (1000–1750, 1750–2000). These regional chapters were all written according to the same template to make the narratives genuinely comparable.

Acknowledgments The initiative for this series was taken by a group of specialists in rural history who have now been collaborating for more than fifteen years in the research group CORN (Comparative Rural History of the North Sea Area), which is sponsored by FWO, Research Foundation - Flanders.

xviii

Series introduction

Scientific cooperation is never easy, and certainly not between eight countries, each with their own historiographical traditions and historical preoccupations. But ­cooperation is particularly challenging intellectually and it opens up so many ­unexpected new horizons. It has been both exciting and a great pleasure to discover that so many scholars were willing to share the pleasures, and sometimes also the difficulties, of this collective enterprise. Meetings were organized in all parts of the North Sea area, drafts were circulated innumerable times, discussed, rewritten, discussed again. The general editorial board is most grateful to the editors of the each of the four volumes and to all the participating authors for their invaluable individual and collective input into the common project. We wish also to express our gratitude to the FWO Research Foundation - Flanders and to Brepols Publishers, in particular Chris VandenBorre, for their long support of the Comparative Rural History of the North Sea Area. the members of the general editorial board: Erik Thoen (Director) Bas van Bavel Yves Segers Eric Vanhaute Leen Van Molle Ghent, Leuven and Utrecht, April 2013

xix

CONTRIBUTORS

Jan Bieleman was associate professor in the field of Dutch agrarian history at the Rural History Group of Wageningen University, the Netherlands. Søren Bitsch Christensen is head of Aarhus City Archives and former director of the Danish Centre for Urban History at Aarhus University, Denmark. Jean-Pierre Devroey is professor of medieval history at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. John Chartres is emeritus professor of social and economic history at the University of Leeds, UK, and former editor of the Agricultural History Review. Marc de Ferrière le Vayer is professor of modern history and holder of Unesco Chair ‘Sauvegarde et valorisation des patrimoines culturels alimentaires’ at the Univerity François-Rabelais, Tours, France. Alban Gautier is senior lecturer of medieval history at the Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale, Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. Pim Kooij was, until his retirement in 2010, professor of economic and social History at the University of Groningen and professor of rural history at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. He was also managing director of the Netherlands Agricultural Historical Institute (NAHI). Michael Kopsidis is economic historian and senior researcher at the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Central and Eastern Europe (IAMO), Germany. Klaus-Joachim Lorenzen-Schmidt is historian and Oberarchivrat (senior archivist) at the state archives of Hamburg, Germany. Mogens R. Nissen is associate professor of regional history in the Department of History and Civilization at University of Southern Denmark. Bjørn Poulsen is professor of medieval and early modern history in the Department of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Denmark. Florent Quellier is senior lecturer of early modern history at the University FrançoisRabelais, Tours, and holder of the CNRS chair ‘Histoire de l’alimentation des mondes modernes’, France. Hilde Sandvik is associate professor of Early Modern History in the Department of History at the University of Oslo, Norway. Yves Segers is coordinator of ICAG (Interfaculty Centre for Agrarian History) and professor of rural history at the University of Leuven, Belgium. Leen Van Molle is professor of social history in the Department of History at the University of Leuven and chairperson of ICAG (Interfaculty Centre for Agrarian History), Belgium.

xx

Contributors

Reinoud Vermoesen is guest lecturer and postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Alexis Wilkin is research associate, National Fund for Scientific Research, at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, and director of the research unit SOCIAMM (Sociétés anciennes, médiévales et modernes). Jean-Pierre Williot is professor of contemporary history at the University FrançoisRabelais, Tours, and director of the EA 6294 - LÉA (Laboratory for Food Studies), France.

xxi

1 Introduction: the agro-food market around the

North Sea, 500–2000

Leen Van Molle and Yves Segers The market system for food starts in the field (production) and ends on the table (consumption). It is, of course, affected in reverse order by the influence of the consumer on food trading, processing and production itself. The present book is thus a history of landlords and peasants, granaries, millers and bakers, peddlers, fishmongers and shopkeepers, dairy factories, clock auctions, brands, supermarkets, and changing consumer preferences. For a long time, historians and (development) economists focused merely on the production side in attempting to understand agricultural change from the Early Middle Ages until more recent times. Often, the role played by markets and the demand side was underestimated or even neglected. The pioneering synthesis The agrarian history of  Western Europe 500–1850, first published in Dutch in 1960, is a telling illustration of this. Its author, Bernard Slicher van Bath, showed himself well aware of the interaction between the two extremities of the agro-food-market system, when he wrote that “to and fro between producer and consumer flows a never-ceasing interchange of influences” (Slicher van Bath, 1963: 4). However, he presented little information regarding the passage of foodstuffs from farm to fork, a passage that takes in production, distribution and consumption, as well as the mutual interaction of these, and that in more recent literature is described as the agro-food chain. It is significant in this respect that the words ‘market’ and ‘trade’ are absent from the index of his book. Moreover, recent syntheses and in-depth studies pay little or no attention to the demand side and private consumption, as exemplified, for instance, by most of the thematic issues and contributions addressed and published in the CORN and COST series during the last fifteen years. Why have historians made so little use of the concept of the agro-food chain? To a great extent, this can be explained by the fact that historical disciplines still ­operate largely independently of one another. The two extremities of the agro-food chain – the farmer or peasant on the one hand and the tables of the rich and poor on the other – may have attracted a great deal of attention from scholars, but relatively little attempt has been made so far to integrate research regarding the various links in the chain. Agricultural historians have focused mainly on land use, technology, output and agro-systems; economic historians have studied market supply and prices, import and export movements; consumption historians, for their part, have confined themselves primarily to studying food consumption from a quantitative caloric angle. Recently, more social and cultural themes have come to the fore, with such research topics as the rise of restaurants, the influence of cooks and cookbooks, food quality and hygiene, and culinary identities. However, the intermediate links in the chain, such as food processing or the food industry and the distribution sector (including retail trade), have 1

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000

long been disregarded and it is only recently that these research fields have attracted the interest of historians and other scholars (including geographers), an additional influence here being the ‘cultural turn’, as symbolized by the growing attention to the history of shopping, cooking and eating habits. But even within this last approach, there has been little, if any, analysis that incorporates the agro-food-chain concept. Nevertheless, consumers matter, especially for farmers. Consumer demand is indeed at the centre of the agro-food system. Demand – from consumers and, nota bene, also from processors and merchants who scent attractive market o­ pportunities – induces change, as was already the view of the enlightened Spanish philosopher Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos when he wrote at the end of the eighteenth century: “El consumo es la medida del cultivo” (consumption is the measurement of cultivation). More recently, in her influential book The conditions of agricultural growth (1965), the Danish economist Ester Boserup has theorized about the steering role of demand. Demand puts pressure on agricultural production; it stimulates technical innovation and investment in production and processing, and fosters competition to increase quantity and improve quality; it fuels trade and influences prices. The present volume will abundantly demonstrate that Europe’s agriculture and her agro-food chain have above all been demand-driven, and were already so in pre-industrial times – i.e. before the ‘industrious revolution’ in households, which, according to Jan de Vries (2008), took off around 1650, and before the ‘consumer revolution’, which started with the import of such luxury products as tobacco, tea, coffee and chocolate from newly discovered worlds.

1.1  A history of shifts and changes The agro-food chain and its societal effects changed significantly in various ways between 500 and 2000. In the course of these one and a half millennia, northwestern Europe’s rural economy experienced an intense and profound process of commodification and commercialization, accompanied by various (uneven) forms of integration into regional, national and international markets. We mention here, by way of introduction, the three main developments. Firstly, although the North Sea area suffered for centuries from recurrent periods of scarcity and malnutrition, even within a context of low population figures, it has developed since the last quarter of the nineteenth century into an area of plenty in both quantitative (caloric intake) and qualitative terms (variety and freshness of food), notwithstanding its increasing population density and the continuously rising demand within it. Nowadays, north-western Europe is experiencing an unprecedented abundance, as reflected in, for instance, the low share of food and beverages in private consumer expenditure (in Belgium, 12% in 2011). Nevertheless, growing affluence and modern (and often unhealthy) food habits are causing new problems in north-west European societies, such as overweight and obesity (Gilman, 2008; Oddy, 2009). Secondly, agricultural production within the North Sea area shifted from an activity that, for most people who worked in the fields, was predominantly oriented towards domestic consumption, whether the consumers were members of their own 2



Introduction: the agro-food market around the North Sea, 500–2000 | Chapter 1

households or others of the same local community, to one in which production is almost exclusively geared to the wider world, to unknown people, often urban and even foreign ­consumers. Farmers who were used to producing for the tables and tastes of their equals, direct superiors – such as the landlord, the local chatelain or clergy – and the inhabitants of nearby towns, are oriented now to the European market and beyond, producing, for instance, pig meat and poultry, cheese, butter, vegetables and fruit for export to Russia, the Middle East, North America and other overseas regions. North-west European tables, initially those of the elites and gradually thereafter also those of the masses, have come to be richly graced with ingredients from all over the world, well-known among them being pepper, cloves and other spices that, already in the Middle Ages, were being brought in from Asia. Voyages of discovery, colonialism, trade, migration and tourism have all contributed to the cross-cultural exchange and fusion of flavours, tastes and culinary practices. In the Early Modern Period, potatoes and pineapples were introduced, and plantations in the British and French Caribbean cultivated cane sugar for the European market. Nowadays, north-western Europe imports fish, meat, vegetables and fruit from all continents. Thirdly, implicit in the exchange of foodstuffs and dishes, is the increase in ­commercial transactions, in kind or in cash, with nearby or distant places, and an expanding o­ rganization of markets. That precisely is a central feature of the ‘­modernization’ of agriculture and alimentation in north-west European society at large, market d­ evelopment being recognized as a basis for economic growth and welfare (Federico, 2005: 160–168). This process has gone hand in hand with the expansion and modernization of the transport and communication infrastructure, the decline of transaction costs, and the liberation of commodity flows by the dismantlement of customs barriers and the striving for free-trade policies and relatively stable currencies. Between 1850 and 2000, trade in agricultural products across the world grew no less than seventy-fivefold. According to the estimates of Giovanni Federico, the ­international trade/gross output ratio for all agricultural products went up from 5 per cent in 1870 to 15 per cent in 1913, to 16 or 17 per cent before the Second World War, to 25 per cent and even to 33 per cent in the late 1990s. So-called ‘modern’ agriculture and the concomitant food-processing industry are in essence transport-based. The agrofood chain is thus undoubtedly at the centre of the complex process of economic and cultural globalization, a process that is unevenly distributed over the world, imperfect, but ongoing (Federico, 2005: 28–30; Nützenadel and Trentmann, 2008: 3–15).

1.2  Rationale and research questions Why a book about the agro-food market and the interacting links in the food chain in the North Sea area? What is the relevance of that for history? In answer, we point to the central idea prompting this volume, i.e. that, to understand the historical transformation of the rural and even the urban society of north-western Europe since the Early Middle Ages, account has to be taken not only of environmental conditions and agricultural production, not only of the hard work of farmers and their families, not solely of the gradually more ‘modern’ – to be understood as ‘liberal and 3

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000

democratic’ – property rights and power relationships (the topics of the three other books in this four-volume series), but also – and as a pivotal element in respect of the three other dimensions – of the agro-food market. Farm produce and food, the supply of and demand for them, their processing and distribution are essential to human life. Agro-food markets – both formal and informal – are crucial for the understanding of the historical conditions and development of societies. The guiding questions in this book are, thus: how was the agro-food market organized; how did farmers, country dwellers and other players shape it; how did it evolve; and how can we explain its developments? To unravel the mechanisms in the agro-food chain, a number of topics are addressed by the authors of the book, such as the variety of market systems and the practical organization of food markets (who had access to the market?), the geographical development of markets (what was their operating radius?), trade flows between town and countryside (how were the cities to be fed?) and between regions, market efficiency, and the relationship between the various links operating in the agro-food market. Put otherwise: who had control over the agro-food market? The focus of the present volume is on the production, processing, marketing and consumption of food for humans, not on that of animal feed or other agricultural products such as fibre plants (flax and hemp, for instance), fuels (firewood, peat) and ornamental plants (tulip bulbs, azalea and laurel shrubs, Christmas trees, etc.). Fish is included insofar as it was important for certain local or regional food economies and food cultures, particularly in the coastal regions of northern France, Flanders, Zeeland and Holland, for example, and in parts of Scandinavia. Foodstuffs and the chain of stages they go through until their consumption are central in this book. The three other volumes in the series deal respectively with land use, agricultural production techniques and land productivity; with farm work and family incomes in the countryside; and with access to land, property rights and power relationships. This book follows the same structure as the others in the series. It starts with an impressive overview of market developments in north-western Europe during the Early Middle Ages (500–1000), following that with chapters per country, with a subdivision into two major periods (c. 1000–1750 and c. 1750–2000). All the chapters were written according to a well-considered working scheme, in order to make the book as homogenous as possible and to provide the necessary information for comparison. The key elements in this scheme are: first, the evolving relationship between supply (agricultural production) and demand (population, urbanization); secondly, the development of food processing (artisanal and industrial, including preservation techniques); thirdly, trade in and distribution of foodstuffs (transport, wholesale and retail, marketing); and finally, preparation and consumption (cooking techniques, diet, eating habits). Authors were free to vary slightly the weight given to each of the sub-themes and to choose the appropriate order in which to present them, according to their relative importance in the history of the country concerned and their unequal treatment in national historiography. Indeed, historians are still to a certain extent the prisoners of national historiographical traditions, which may hamper long-term interpretations and cross-border comparisons. Thanks to the working scheme, however, common ground was created for discussion and interpretation of what happened in 4



Introduction: the agro-food market around the North Sea, 500–2000 | Chapter 1

north-western Europe as a whole, as well as in particular periods, political and economic situations, regions and states. One of the problems of an international publication such as this is the uneven use and sometimes dissimilar meaning of historical terms. National traditions, their specific terminology and the understanding of certain terms may vary. For instance, the words ‘landlord’, ‘farmer’ and ‘peasant’ are usually understood as indicating respectively ‘a landowner who lives from the rents he collects from his tenants’, ‘a rather wealthy market-oriented agricultural producer’, and ‘a poor cultivator trying to eke out a living on a tiny plot of land’ (see also van Bavel and Hoyle, 2010: xvii–xviii). But the distinction between farmers and peasants is unclear and variable. It is striking that most authors, as is also the case in this book, change their vocabulary from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards, as if the modernization of farming accomplished a socio-cultural upgrading of those who worked the land: peasants became farmers. Furthermore, other words are susceptible to varied interpretation: medieval towns in England, Flanders, Holland or the Rhineland, such as London, Bruges, Amsterdam and Cologne, were of another size and nature than the small urban centres in the south of Norway and Sweden. Authors were asked to use the established scholarly vocabulary regarding the region in question, but to explain the specific terms within their context.

1.3  Three focal points This book is built around three focal points – the market, the food chain and the North Sea area in the period from ca. 500 to 2000 – all of which require further elucidation.

Markets and town-countryside relations Agricultural production and the distribution of food operate within a market ­system. Markets are never just ‘neutral’ links between supply (by farmers) and demand (from consumers). Their function involves more than the mere reciprocal exchange and redistribution of goods. They are to be considered as dynamic links, shaped via c­ ommunication and negotiation between individuals and groups – i.e. by ‘visible hands’ – and concerned with the achievement of their own (often conflicting) goals. Homo oeconomicus is above all a social being who values certain things for their ­usefulness, beauty or scarcity, for instance, and this always within a specific (historical) context. As soon as things acquire a value in social relations, they enter virtually or literally into a market system, as explained in Georg Simmel’s sociological theory of value (Cantó Milà, 2005). Market relationships are imbued with all-too-human hopes and fears, mutual trust and suspicion, speculation and risk. They are driven by need and greed, fuelled by familial industry, commercial ambitions and consumers’ interests (Reinhard and Stagl, 2007). No wonder, then, that markets – at the microlevel of households and local communities, at the macro-level of regions and states, and at the transnational and global level – are historically drivers of societal change, as has been stressed in various recent scholarly publications (van Zanden, 1999; Allen, 2000; de Vries, 2008; Pinilla, 2009). 5

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000

Market transactions are widespread, and were so in traditional societies, too (Dyer, 2007). Even the Frankish settlements and the oldest monasteries in the North Sea area did not function as closed, autarchic, self-contained economies, as is clearly demonstrated in the following chapter of this book. During the Middle Ages, and until the nineteenth century in some European regions, the market system continued to exhibit informal, feudal or seigneurial characteristics. Everywhere, however, it has become increasingly monetized, commercialized, competitive, and organized and co-organized by public authorities. North-western Europe is a particularly interesting area to study market developments, because of its early and profound urbanization with relatively open, commercial markets. Cities, as densely populated centres of consumption, have to be fed by the surrounding countryside. According to the model of Johann H. von Thünen – formulated already in 1826, before industrialization really took off – optimal, agricultural land use is related to demand and the costs of transport to the market. Cities prompt intensive, commercial farming in their surroundings; farmers, for their part, try to maximize their profit by producing for substantial urban markets and prosperous consumers. For each product there is a specific distance from the city centres within which its production is profitable. Therefore, dairying and market-gardening, whose products are the most perishable, are to be located in an immediate circle around the cities. Concentric beyond this ‘inner’ circle are others, devoted to grain and other field crops, cattle (able to be driven on the hoof to the towns for slaughter) and forest (for fuel). Although von Thünen’s model is perhaps too schematic – topography, soil fertility and differential transport costs may distort it – clear examples of its validity can be found in the following chapters. From the Early Middle Ages onwards, peasant producers in Europe were able to respond to emerging opportunities on nearby or distant markets to raise their production, develop specializations and establish commercial networks for their sales (also Chartres, 1990; Persson, 1999; Pinilla, 2009). However, this did not happen linearly, as this book will demonstrate, but with important regional and chronological differences, depending on the early or retarded dismantling of feudalism, and the degree of urbanization and take-off of (proto-)industrialization. In 1300, according to the estimation of Jan de Vries, no more than 4 or 5 per cent of Europe’s population lived in towns of 10 000 inhabitants or more; in 1500, almost 6 per cent; in 1800, 10 per cent; compared to nearly 50 per cent in 2000 (de Vries, 2007: 15–77). Urban dwellers purchase their daily food on the market, as in general does the increasing proportion of non-agricultural workers. It is important to notice that agriculture remained the most important sector of employment – accounting for more than half of the active population – in all the countries under consideration (except England) until the late eighteenth century. But this situation changed dramatically in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, first in Britain and Belgium, then later and at a somewhat slower pace in the other north-west European countries, the percentage of the active population employed in agriculture dropping to below 5 per cent by around 2000. It is also important to underline that the transport of goods and the mobility of people between the countryside and urban centres are not to be seen as unidirectional. The centrality and vitality of the cities, which seem to reduce the countryside to a 6



Introduction: the agro-food market around the North Sea, 500–2000 | Chapter 1

backward periphery, have never prevented an intense reciprocity of relationships. The countryside has never been a separate world, or an immobile one. Town and countryside are intensely intertwined and mutually interdependent. Country people, for their part, are buyers of urban manufactured goods, merchants sell to both urban and village markets, urban elites have invested in farmland and have had summer residences in the countryside. The production, distribution and consumption of goods have been steered from both city and countryside (Zimmermann, 2001).

The food chain The food chain is the second focal point in this book. The reason why is clear: it is because the history of the agro-food market is largely dependent on the dynamics of and interaction between each of the links in the chain. The concept of the food chain (also called ‘food system’ or ‘food network’) is relatively new, particularly in historical research, and offers a very fruitful basis for scientific and political thinking about the relationship between agriculture and the daily alimentation of millions of people all over the world. Instead of dividing the study of the agro-food market into separate sub-sectors or processes, the food-chain approach considers the agro-food complex as a sequential process, a successive set of actions together forming a continuum, a single generic and spatial system in which the transport of goods and the interaction of people and institutions are central, and which is composed of various interrelated elements (Nützenadel and Trentmann, 2008: 13). Links in that system are: agriculture (arable farming, cattle breeding, horticulture), coastal and deep- sea fishing, artisanal and industrial food processing (grain mills, oil mills, creameries, sugar refineries, canning factories, slaughterhouses, breweries, etc.), preservation technology (salting, fermenting, drying, cooling, freezing, etc.), distribution (including stockpiling, wholesale, retail, publicity), cooking (open fires, stoves, microwave ovens, ingredients, recipes) and consumption (at home, in restaurants, menus). Interaction among all the links in the chain can happen in every possible combination. And, of course, other elements have an impact, too, such as the means of transport, population growth and purchasing power. It is, so to say, impossible to understand the dynamics of one of the links in the system without taking the whole food chain into account, from the field to the table, including the changes within that chain (Segers et.al., 2009). Since the Early Middle Ages, the food chain has changed fundamentally, not only in respect of each of the individual links, but also and above all as regards the nature of their interrelationships and mutual dependence. The available academic literature points to four major trends during the previous centuries. Firstly, a process of lengthening occurred. From the moment agriculture started to become more market oriented, the number of intermediate links began to grow, to take in, for instance, with merchants and traders, processors of food, etc. Moreover, thanks to more efficient transport networks and preservation techniques, the geographical distance between the beginning and end of the chain increased. Secondly, a process of functional differentiation got under way. Operations in all links of the food chain became much more complex 7

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000

and became characterized by expanding specialization, use of modern technology and State regulation. Thirdly, the various links in the food chain became much more interdependent, and their activities became increasingly geared to one another, as in the case between dairy farmers and the milk factory. Finally, a shift in power relationships took place. The position of the farmer gradually weakened, whereas consumers and particularly the retail sector (supermarkets, among others) strengthened their influence. In this book we seek to analyse this evolution in more detail, over a long period (ca. fifteen centuries) and from an international, comparative perspective.

The North Sea area in a long-term perspective Political history can dwell on events and situations that have a tendency to evolve swiftly and sometimes radically. Agricultural history, on the contrary, seems to deal with what Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, when writing about the peasants of the Languedoc, has called “une histoire immobile”. This image of an immobilism that referred to the preindustrial period has meanwhile been subject to serious criticism, but the fact remains that agriculture is characterized by slow change. Farmers are anything but inclined to change their crop choice and production techniques from year to year, because they are simply not equipped to do so, because access to new knowledge and methods is not self-evident and because they fear the financial risks. Immobilism is a word that also has a certain aptness with regard to eating patterns: for example, it took more than two centuries for the potato to become integrated into Europe’s diet; and maize (or ‘indian corn’ as it was named) never really succeeded in becoming a wow factor on north-west European tables (Carraretto, 2005). Other novelties were more easily accepted, such as spices, coffee, chocolate and bananas, not forgetting rice, which indeed had already been introduced from the Far East into the Mediterranean before the start of the Christian era, its adoption spreading later to the rest of Europe and from Europe to America. With its broad geographical scope and long perspective over time, this volume aims to offer a wide-ranging historical survey and to facilitate comparisons that help to identify forerunners and shed light on parallel developments, convergences and divergences. In this respect, north-western Europe is an excellent subject to study: as mentioned above, its agro-food market was characterized from the Early Middle Ages onwards by expanding commercial relations between regions and an increasing process of market integration. It is important to mention here the favourable environmental factors that the North Sea area has enjoyed, preconditions for the successful development of its agricultural production and trade. First of all are the moderate maritime climate and appropriate soil conditions – mostly fertile loam and sandy loam lowlands, and here and there sandy and peaty soils, heathland and marshes – which opened the way to intensive, highly productive arable and livestock farming. Second is the North Sea, which, rich in fish, has contributed to the food supply, besides acting as a rather convenient and cheap waterway for the transport of agricultural produce abroad; this dual advantage has likewise been offered by the numerous rivers of the region, of which the Thames, Loire, Seine, Scheldt, Meuse, Rhine, Ems, Weser and Elbe have been the most important. 8



Introduction: the agro-food market around the North Sea, 500–2000 | Chapter 1

But a certain ‘natural’ homogeneity and favourable environmental factors were not enough to turn the North Sea area easily into an integrated market, let alone for that market to be considered as a closed complex; after all, the far-reaching Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union is of only recent date (it is worth remembering that five of the six founder members of the union – France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Luxemburg – are part of the North Sea area). This book goes right back into history and looks to reveal where, how, for which products and to what degree market flows came into being and contributed to forms of integration. It is important to take into consideration that markets for food have not necessarily coincided with political frontiers (indeed, borders changed frequently during the millennium and a half under consideration), or with the geographical borders of the North Sea area. There were probably countless variations: for example, markets in coastal areas are likely to have differed from those in the interior regions. It is reasonable to assume that the development of trade across the North Sea, trade over land or sea with the Mediterranean and the Middle East, transatlantic trade from the Early Modern Period on with the ‘New World’ had a noticeable impact on regional markets, remodelling the food chain and fundamentally influencing eating habits. It is not only that influences in the wake of market transactions have affected northwestern Europe, but also that the interplay between markets has induced substantial changes in other parts of the world. A Eurocentric perspective, then, is too narrow a standpoint and the praise of Europe’s agriculture and culinary traditions inevitably too one-sided and pretentious. But, as Michael Mitterauer argues, the path that northwestern Europe’s agriculture and food economy took from the Early Middle Ages onwards – a combination of intensive grain growing, cattle breeding and forestry, with important effects on artisanal and industrial technology (such as grain milling) and crafts (such as dairying, brewing and leather manufacturing), and further down the line market development and (colonial) expansion – made it in any case special in comparison to what was happening simultaneously in the Chinese empire and the Islamic caliphates (Mitterauer, 2001 and 2010). Accordingly, it comes as no surprise that the centre of gravity of the ‘world economy’, which moved during the Middle Ages from the Mediterranean to the North Sea, remained there at least until 1914 (before moving to North America and Asia) and that, historically, a large part of the current globalized agro-food system has north-west European roots. This book aims at unravelling the underlying mechanisms of all this.

1.4 Acknowledgements History books have their own history, a history that matters in terms of understanding what influence they have on their authors during the writing of them, and what influence they have on their readers once they are published. This book is one in a series of four volumes all following the same concept; they all present long-term and transnational histories regarding north-western Europe from 500 to 2000, and all have been written by multi-author teams. Although this last is undoubtedly a recipe for a long, time-consuming, complex and sometimes troublesome production process, 9

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000

international collaboration is also a recipe for a rewarding outcome, in terms of both scientific value added and fraternal friendships. That is precisely what the editorial team of this book hoped for and what it has experienced. The present volume in the series Rural economy and society in north-western Europe, 500–2000 is the result of intense collaboration among no less than eighteen scholars from seven European countries. Agricultural production, food processing, distribution and food consumption are the key themes around which we have been working together for several years now. The very first outline of this book dates from the spring of 2006 when the CORN research group – as explained in the series introduction – took the initiative to bring out a four-volume comparative and long-term synthesis of the rural history of the North Sea area. Since then, the group of the book’s authors has been expanded, the outline has been refined, drafts of all the chapters have circulated (over and over again) and fruitful editorial meetings have been organized in Leuven (more than once), Ghent, Tours and Brighton. Each chapter is the outcome of careful consideration, reconsideration and discussion, thanks to which parallel, convergent and divergent developments gradually came to the fore, throwing up ideas for the introduction and the comparative dimension of the conclusion. The result is the work of many people. We offer our thanks to all: the eighteen authors, all other colleagues who commented on drafts of the chapters and gave advice, Bart Dewit who produced the maps, Toon Toelen who helped with the selection of images, Frank Parker who re-jigged the English of the typescripts, Chris VandenBorre of Brepols Publishers for all his support and patience, and finally, Erik Thoen and the other members of the general editorial board of CORN with whom it is always rewarding to work.

10



Introduction: the agro-food market around the North Sea, 500–2000 | Chapter 1

Bibliography Allen, R. (2000) ‘Economic structure and agricultural productivity in Europe, 1300–1800’, European Review of Economic History, 4, 1, pp. 1–26. Bevir, M. and Trentmann, F. (eds) (2004) Markets in historical contexts. Ideas and politics in the modern world, Cambridge. Bavel, B.J.P. and Hoyle, R.W. (eds) (2010) Rural economy and society in north-western Europe, 500–2000. Social relations, property and power, Turnhout. Boserup, E. (1965) The conditions of agricultural growth. The economics of agrarian change under population pressure, Chicago. Cantó Milà, N. (2005) A sociological theory of value. Georg Simmel’s sociological ­relationism, Bielefeld. Carraretto, M. (2005) Histoires de maïs, d’une divinité amérindienne à ses avatrs t­ ransgéniques. Paris. Chartres, J. ed. (1990) Agricultural markets and trade, 1500–1750, Cambridge. Dyer, Chr. (ed.) (2007) The self-contained village? The social history of rural communities 1250–1900, Hertfordshire. Federico, G. (2005) Feeding the world. An economic history of agriculture, 1800–2000, Princeton. Gilman, S.L. (2008) Fat. A cultural history of obesity, Cambridge. Mitterauer, M. (2001) ‘Roggen, Reis and Zuckerrohr. Drie Agrarrevolutionen des Mittelalters im Vergleich’, Saeculum, 52, pp. 245–265. Mitterauer, M. (2010) Why Europe? The medieval origins of its special path, Chicago. Nützenadel, A. and Trentmann, F. (eds) (2008) Food and globalization. Consumption, ­markets and politics in the modern world, Oxford and New York. Oddy, D., Atkins, P.J. and Amilien, V. (eds) (2009) The rise of obesity in Europe. A ­twentiethcentury food history, Farnham. Persson, K.G. (1999) Grain markets in Europe 1500–1900, integration and deregulation, Cambridge. Pinilla, V. (ed.) (2009) Markets and agricultural change in Europe from the 13th to the 20th century, Turnhout. Reinhard, W. and Stagl, J. (eds) (2007) Menschen und Märkte. Studien zur historischen Wirtschaftsanthropologie, Köln. Segers, Y., Bieleman, J. and Buyst, E. (eds) (2009) Exploring the food chain. Food production and food processing in Western Europe, 1850–1990, Turnhout. Slicher van Bath, B. H. (1963, first ed. in Dutch 1960) The agrarian history of Western Europe A.D. 500–1850, London. Vries, J. de (2007) European urbanization 1500–1800. History of the city, London. Vries, J. de (2008) The industrious revolution. Consumer behavior and the household economy, 1650 to the present, Cambridge. Zanden, J.L. van (1999) ‘The development of agricultural productivity in Europe, 1500–1800’, in P.J.P. van Bavel and E. Thoen (eds), Land productivity and agro-systems in the North Sea area (Middle Ages–20th century), Turnhout, pp. 357–375. Zimmermann, Cl. (ed.) (2001) Dorf und Stadt. Ihre Beziehungen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, Frankfurt am Main.

11

Illustration 2.1  Planting vines, c. 820–830, as depicted in the Stuttgarter Psalter, ­Saint-Germain-des-Prés

2 Agricultural production, distribution and

consumption around the North Sea, 500–1000 Jean-Pierre Devroey, Alexis Wilkin and Alban Gautier*

An open or closed economy? Before the role played by the market in the agro-food system is examined, it is necessary to cite a series of theoretical debates on the general nature of the economy between the years 500 and 1000. For the German economist Karl Bücher (1893), the economy of the Early Middle Ages was a natural economy (Natural Wirtschaft) or a closed domestic economy (Geschlossene Hauswirtschaft), i.e. the greater part of agricultural production was consumed either directly by the producers or indirectly by the social classes who ruled over them. Those classes supplied themselves independently of trade circuits, more particularly through direct farming and through the provision of products and peasant labour within the framework of large estates. The economic model set out by Bücher minimizes the importance of commercial transactions and rules out the dynamism of the manorial (French: domanial) economy. The restrictions on agricultural surplus being put on the market would have been twofold: (1) the difficulty of producing a surplus, given the inefficiency of production within a manorial framework; (2) the scant interest in producing and selling surplus produce, which had to do with the importance of the costs of transport and the weakness of demand – the greater part of the agricultural produce consumed by the elites, for example, being obtained directly (Pirenne, 1937; Slicher van Bath, 1963: 29–39). Alfons Dopsch contests these ideas, affirming the numerical importance of an autonomous peasantry (compared with the large estates) that fed the market directly and supported commercial activity during the Carolingian period (eighth to the tenth century). Since the 1960s, a growing number of historians have contested the idea of the large-estate system (or manorial/domanial system) lacking efficiency and its self-sufficient nature, stressing its dynamism and its integration within an exchange economy through the selling of surpluses (Toubert, 1990; Verhulst, 2002). The Carolingian era was thus characterized by an increase in agricultural production within a context of demographic growth. From the 1950s onwards, the dissemination of the ideas of Marcel Mauss and Karl Polanyi amongst historians of ancient and medieval societies led necessarily to a revision of the nature of exchange: exchange itself was prompted by various considerations, in which economic concerns (trade) played a role; nonetheless, it was not exclusively determined by those concerns, as is shown by the non-market *

Points 2.2 and 2.7 were written by J.-P. Devroey; point 2.3, by A. Gautier; points 2.5 and 2.6 by A. Wilkin; the other points by J.-P. Devroey and A. Wilkin, this last also formatting the entire chapter.

13

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000

map 2 The North Sea area, 500–1000 Town Archeological site Abbey Emporium Palace Rivers

N O R WAY 0

100

200 km

SWEDEN

DENMARK

N O R T H

S E A

TissøUppåkra Ribe

Gudme Haithabu/Hedeby

York

Flixborough Feddersen

B R I TA I N

Dahlem

E n g l a n d

FRISIA

Ipswich

THE NETHERLANDS Dorestad

Lundenwic London Hamwic

C H A N N E L

Corvey

BELGIUM

Saint-Omer Saint-Bertin Annappes Quentovic Saint-Vaast Arras Lobbes

GERMANY

Maastricht

Fulda

Aachen

Sc he ldt

Southampton

Tiel

Domburg

Thames

Prüm

Mainz

Corbie

Saint-Germain-des-Prés Ferrières-sur-le-Loing

Loire

Lorsch

Strasbourg

Saint Martin de Tours

FRANCE

Sankt Gallen

SWITZERLAND

14

Main

Rh ine

Paris

Mos el

Saint-Denis

B r i t t a n y

Treves

se Meu

Se in e

be nu Da



Agricultural production, distribution and consumption around the North Sea, 500–1000 | Chapter 2

circulation of goods in the name of redistribution or the principles of reciprocity, or indeed of Christian ideology, which subordinates any economic activity to its spiritual project. Today, the re-evaluation of the economic dynamism of the Carolingian period and the widening of the notion of exchange (without excluding the dimension of trade) allows a new synthesis to be offered. This requires integration of elements that have been studied separately by historians: the production model (the perspective of supply) and the distribution model (the perspective of demand) (Wickham, 2008). For Wickham, the demand of the elites played a crucial role in prompting exchange and in the circulation (whether ‘market’ or ‘non-market’) of goods in the Early Middle Ages. Between the fifth and seventh centuries, demand certainly dropped sharply in the West, with differences between Romano-Frankish areas1 (where the elites remained proportionally richer and more numerous than elsewhere) and other regions. From the time of the Late Roman Empire to the Carolingian period, it was the way in which the elites accumulated and obtained surplus agricultural produce that changed: in the Roman era, it had been an official taxation system through which the urbanized elites drew their supplies and which allowed a good part of rural produce to be concentrated in elite hands. That system did not survive and, after a period of abatement (contraction of the economy), which corresponded a relative autonomization of the peasantry, a new model imposed itself during the Carolingian period, with an intensification of the pressure exercised by the elites on the production system, a swelling of agricultural production and an enrichment of the elites during the rise to power of the Carolingians. From 840 onwards, as a result of the disruption caused by secular lords and the Vikings, a lot of the wealth that had accreted to accumulate by the Crown and the churches found its way back into circulation. To what extent and in what way did elite demand condition the nature of peasant farming and the production and circulation of agricultural products? At the heart of the Frankish world, the elites concentrated a significant proportion of landed property in their hands, and these lands were worked by dependent peasants. However, in other regions of the Frankish Empire, where seigniorial power was less intense and more distant from the countryside, the peasantry had a large degree of autonomy in respect of what it produced. If the agro-food system was demand-driven before 1000, it was not so solely through the conjuncture of supply and demand on the market (in the Smithian sense). When there was production of agricultural goods over and above the food needs of the producers and the elites who ruled over them, consumer demand (often aristocratic) took a number of different forms (gifts and counter-gifts, taxes and tributes, war and pillage). But these transfers were not carried out within the exclusive framework of a Naturalwirtschaft; part of the agricultural surplus was transformed into currency. Agricultural produce was sold to allow the elites to acquire specific artisanal products or rare resources; for their part, peasants were forced to sell it in order to meet the 1

While the political influence of the Franks expanded sharply, the core of Frankish power was located in the area between the Loire and the Rhine.

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demand for cash payment of taxes and dues in produce. Numerous questions nevertheless remain open, including those of the identity of the buyers (where the elites had direct access to the produce) and the effects of the ‘market’ in agricultural produce on the structures of production. However, the very nature of the sources makes it difficult to estimate figures for production and productivity; at least we come to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. A more general matter is that of explaining the start of the multi-secular and progressive growth that got under way in the seventh century and saw the emergence of north-western Europe as an ever more densely populated area, where land exploitation and the circulation of agricultural and craft goods became more intensive, though not yet purely ‘commercial’. The shift from the Mediterranean ‘Roman economy’ to a ‘Carolingian economy’ was investigated by Henri Pirenne, who attributed it to the Muslim invasions. However, recent investigations (McCormick, 2002) have proved this to be wrong. In the first place, they place the emphasis on certain factors of decline that affected the Roman Empire and ascribe this last’s downfall to ecological and health factors (plague or malaria), among other things. Secondly, they show how intense the circulation of people and luxury goods between the southern part of the Carolingian Empire (Marseilles, the north of Italy) and the Eastern World became, beginning in the seventh century and peaking around 900. Thirdly, they show what goods were being exported from the west of Europe – mainly slaves taken into captivity by the Carolingians and exchanged for silk, spices and drugs. It appears that the rich resources sustaining this international interchange were not cereals or agricultural goods, but rather the human beings exported as ‘products’ from Europe. Nevertheless, it has to be underlined that internal growth in agricultural production and even the circulation of agricultural goods, while probably not connected to the trade with the Orient, developed in strict parallel with the recovery of international economic links between East and West. This chapter will first deal with the three steps of the food chain: production, processing and consumption (sections 1, 2 and 3). It will then study the dynamic processes at work within the agro-food chain: demand, both institutional and ordinary (section 4), the circuits of circulation, provisioning and selling, with an explanation of the different positions of the actors, including the lay elites themselves consuming surpluses locally or reselling them, and the ecclesiastical communities driving sophisticated networks set up around central places intended for and often implied in trade (section 5); the emergence of such trading places as urban and rural markets, and emporia (section 6); and the shift from a barter to a money economy (section 7).

2.1  Agricultural production During the Early Middle Ages, the greater part of agricultural production either went on ensuring farmers and their farms of a subsistence or was consumed by the elites. The different stages of the agro-food chain, from production to consumption, were thus functions of the relationships of production, which linked farmers to those who had political and land rights. Chronological and regional variations 16



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bore mainly on the degree of peasant autonomy, on the type of land ownership and on the practical details of the extraction and transfer of agricultural wealth to the benefit of non-producers.

The situation around A.D.400 and the end of Roman domination At the beginning of the fifth century, peasant farmers on one side of the Rhine lived in a completely different agrarian system to those on the other side. To the east, in Germany, the rural population (composed of free, armed peasants, and slaves) practiced a mixed agriculture dominated by livestock farming and the use of uncultivated land, and lived in villages ruled over by warriors. We lack direct data to describe precisely that population’s production, exchange and consumption practices before the migrations. Each free peasant acquired rights to use uncultivated land within the boundaries of the land of the local community to which he belonged; these rights included livestock grazing, wood cutting, and occupying ground in common woods (for temporary cereal cultivation or for definitive land-clearing) (Modzelewski, 2006: 222–235). To the west, in the western provinces of the Roman Empire, the agrarian system was characterized by extensive farming dominated by large farms, based on cereals and specialized products such as wool and linen; that farming also included livestock grazing for military or travelling purposes (equines), for the supply of draught animals or animals for slaughter (bovines) and for the production of cold, cooked meats (pork meats), which circulated widely in the Empire, and wool (ovines, in what is contemporary northern France and around Treves). From the fourth century onwards, vineyards grew in number in the Mosel valley and Alsace, in the Paris area, in the Bourgogne region and probably in the Reims and Laon regions, too (Ferdière, 2006: 110; Devroey, 1989). The rural population was set within a network of aristocratic residences and agricultural farming centres (villae) of medium to large size, around which were peasant family farms in isolation or grouped together in vici (Ouzoulias, 2006) – a lot less numerous than the future medieval villages – which assumed the functions of a central site at local level. Archaeological excavations have certainly blown up the importance of central buildings (villae’s pars rustica), to the detriment of less sophisticated structures in which a section of the peasant population lived. The northern half of Gaul, the Rhine area and Great Britain constituted economic and political territories partly separated from the Mediterranean world and political bodies centred on Rome (Wickham, 2009: 34). The villae, which in part also served as rural residences for the urban elite, formed the heart of farming complexes. Direct production and property taxes ensured both the upkeep of the standing army quartered on the limes and in the large towns of the hinterland, and the supplying of an urban network spread evenly across the territory; they were channelled towards the civilian elite, either directly, towards the large property owners to maintain their lifestyle, or indirectly, through the process of levying property taxes, of which a part – through incentives and widespread corruption – remained in the hands of the classes that took care of collection (the urban bureaucracy). It is estimated that, at the height of the Late Empire, property tax – levied essentially on farmers – amounted to around a third of agricultural gross domestic product. This 17

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tax was the fundamental structure underpinning the functioning of the State and all sectors (including trading) of the exchange economy in Antiquity (Hopkins, 2000). The end of this whole system of property tax as intermedium, together with the crisis of the elites linked to it, was progressive; contributing to its disappearance in the West, despite the fruitless attempts by the barbarian nations and their ruling classes to perpetuate it, were the disarray of the Late Empire and the perverse effects of the property tax itself (tax evasion and desertion, the rural rebellions of the Bagaudae in the fifth century). The two principal items of the Imperial budget, the provisioning of the major towns (Rome in the first place) and pay for the standing army would disappear. From the fifth century on, the soldiery asked to be maintained directly through the distribution of land; at the same time, the sophisticated monetary system that had characterized ancient societies (abundant and regular coining in gold, silver and bronze) disappeared. By the end of the sixth century, in Frankish Gaul, the registers of property tax were no longer being kept up to date and the levels of tax collection must have fallen everywhere, to persist in the form of a tribute close to 10 per cent (as against a third previously) (Wickham, 2009: 103). From the third to the fourth century, in parallel with this, the terms of land occupation underwent a significant shift: the legal status of farmers worsened, with the status of colon subjecting tenant-farmers to the rule of large owners and tying them to the land; and the total number of rural farms fell sharply, to the detriment of the smallest, which must have further reinforced the phenomenon of integration of rural populations into larger economic structures and the concentration of agricultural farms and local power in the hands of the richest magnates. Technologies seem to have been little affected by the passage from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (see below), but production, living and distribution were changed dramatically. To be noted is the quasi-disappearance of the mass manufacture of standardized products (ceramics, construction materials, small coinage), which had been widespread in the countryside (Ward-Perkins, 2005: 87–121). From the fifth century onwards, there was a transformation in the way land was farmed and evolution at regional level in the populating of the countryside: we can observe a strong contraction of the areas cultivated and a discontinuity in the location, type and size of farms, and numerous desertions of sites or changes in site form, building and size (Devroey, 2003, 2009; Wickham, 2005). However, the profound change that visited the rural landscape in the West was neither totally synchronous nor rapid. When the villa system ended varied greatly from region to region: between the latter part of the fourth century and 450 in Britannia and Frisia; between 350 and 450 in northern Gaul; and later in regions situated south of the Loire (Wickham, 2005). During this period, farming became mixed, closely combining food-crop growing with domestic livestock breeding, and having substantial recourse to uncultivated land. Agricultural production changed, both qualitatively and quantitatively: the areas cultivated shrank, livestock breeding became less labour-intensive and the scale of livestock holdings also diminished generally, reverting to the situation of the pre-Roman period. The collapse of the tax system and the move to payment of dues in produce thus had fundamental consequences for the terms and volume of the transfer of agricultural wealth. Did this process of contraction benefit the peasants, with its significant reduction of transfers of 18



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agricultural wealth to the society that set the framework for them and thus the relative impoverishment and the quantitative reduction of the elite social group (Wickham, 2005)? Did the end of Antiquity signal an ‘end to comfort’, leading to more widespread impoverishment (Ward-Perkins, 2005)? Did the Roman-Frankish regions see a relative survival of the land-use structures of Antiquity and rural slavery (Bainaji, 2009)? These questions are being debated (Sarris, 2009). In any case, the obliteration of the framework of Roman production is clearer still in Britannia than in Gaul. Britannia, strongly Romanized, experienced the collapse of the villa system and the disappearance of the civitates, and her material culture (the built environment; craft industry) became drastically simplified. Agricultural continuity can nonetheless be observed (Wickham, 2005: 309) with the abandoning of the heavier soils and great rural-settlement mobility (Arnold and Wardle, 1991; Hamerow, 1991). The general economic depression of the fifth to the seventh century thus had an agrarian dimension, which has been neglected by most historians. The same is true for the reversal of the economy and the intensification of production that followed. If the agrarian dimension does indeed have a part in explaining the dynamism of the north-west of the Frankish world after 650–700 (with the vitality of Carolingian agriculture set in the large-estate system) (Toubert, 1990, 2004; Verhulst, 2002), it is almost totally absent in analysis of the preceding period.

The framing of agricultural production in the Frankish world (the sixth to the seventh century) The transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages was marked by the more or less rapid wiping-out of the frameworks of Roman agricultural production, an obliteration intimately linked to a radical change in the life styles of the ruling classes. During this period of transition, the large landowners continued to live according to the model of the classical Roman aristocrat, dividing their time between their town and country residences, these last set at the heart of a large landed property. However, this system gradually died out in the former Roman provinces, the process being irregular and attested to by the abandonment or the transformation of the sites of ancient villae, as revealed by archaeology. The classical form of the grand villa, which linked the pars urbana, where the master lived, with a pars rustica, grouping the agricultural infrastructure facilities, disappeared. Moreover, the ancient sites abandoned or reoccupied in much less sophisticated manner. Little is yet known about the way in which, before the seventh century, aristocrats governed their local communities and extracted the countryside’s surplus produce. A significant part of aristocratic income came from the collection of tributes levied on very often vast territories. This form of loose lordship (Innes, 2000) was well adapted to the domination of peasants engaged in mixed farming, which combined the grazing of livestock over necessarily huge spaces with the growing of subsistence crops. In England, the products of extensive livestock rearing were a source of wealth exploited by these territorial tributes, other dues being grouped under the name of pastum (feeding) and fod(e)rum (horses’ fodder) and collected by the aristocrats in 19

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the name of the king, from whom they drew their ascendancy over free peasants, as well as their legal and military positions in the territories they ruled (Wickham, 2005: 321–325; Faith, 2009: 29–31). Besides these levies, the peasants tied to the soil, such as the colons and serfs, in all likelihood also stumped up honour gifts (chickens, eggs) for their masters, by way of payment for habitation, and provided supplies of food and drink (bread, ale). When supplies were demanded pro rata, as was the case in the laws of the Bavarians and the Alamans in the eighth century, the tax was only 10 per cent, which confirms the hypothesis of the contraction of the fifth to the seventh century. The vaster properties of the aristocrats could serve as residences and their agricultural constituent parts were farmed directly by slaves working daily under the management of a steward. The sources, however, do not allow us to estimate the importance of this, which historiography has perhaps overblown. Despite the imprecision, it is clear that the overall magnitude of the wealth extracted from the countryside was well below that during Antiquity (see above), without this diminution in product transfer being offset by an intensification of the work load. The system acted as one of ‘seigniorial dues’ (Abgabenherrschaft) overlying largely autonomous peasant economies as much in the old Roman provinces, on the Continent and in England (Wickham, 2005: 428–434) as in the regions that had never experienced the domination of the large estate organized on the Roman model. The middle of the seventh century probably marks a progressive increase (whether widespread or restricted to certain areas of domination remains to be verified) of transfers to the benefit of the elites (numerically greater), as well as of a progressive territorial organization of the elites’ domination, which led ever more peasants into relationships of protection and dependence (mundium/obsequium) that were put to account within the framework of the villa by local leaders. The putting into place of a system of bipartition (the linking of a seigniorial demesne, French: reserve, to dependent peasant farms) was reflected in new additions to the vocabulary of rural institutions: riga, mansus, cultura from the seventh century and opera corrogata from the eighth (Kuchenbuch, 1988; Devroey, 1993). In the north of Francia, these phenomena were amplified in the modification of the frameworks of production and in what ways areas were peopled (cf. nuclear villages), the rural built environment, and the topographical organization of soils. By around 800, a large part of northern Europe had evolved towards the model of seigniorial levies (in which the lord of the land ruled the peasants and appropriated a significant part of their surplus produce), whereas, south of the Loire and in Italy, the older ways of functioning remained in place longer (Wickham, 2005: 536–550).

The ideal of self sufficiency in the monastic and aristocratic world During the transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, the interest of the elites in agriculture and the management of estates carried over into the ecclesiastical sphere and, under the influence of the Rule of Saint Benedict, particularly into the abbeys, where the abbot and a small number of monks acting as officials did their best to manage the community’s worldly affairs in order to ensure its subsistence. The monks 20



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had inherited the ancient concept of oikonomia (house management), which served equally at both the material and the spiritual level (domus Dei): treatises on Roman agricultural economy were copied in the Benedictine monasteries during the seventh to the ninth centuries, and monks wrote manuals on good domestic management, such as those sent by abbot Adalard to the monastic officials of Corbie in 822. The principles formulated in the manuals did not lead to a strict ideal of self-sufficiency; moreover, the abbot or the king had any surplus produce sold and bought products that did not come from their property holdings. This ideology pervaded the secular elites during the reign of Charlemagne, as is illustrated by the preparation in 780/800 of normative texts such as the Capitulary de villis. This last was probably produced following a reorganization of the royal household, with a view to covering – ‘from the villae instituted to that end’ (Capitulary de villis, ch. 1) – the needs of the king and his retinue during their journeys, without having recourse to the gîte (sheltering) system, widespread throughout the whole of the West, whereby responsibility for the upkeep of the king and his retinue (fodrum, gistum et servitium regis) was entrusted to freemen, churches and monasteries (in other words in the last resort to the populations ruled by these elites), who offered ‘the means of support of the king en route, in terms of goods, food and fodder’ (McKitterick, 2008: 172). In this sense, the Capitulary de villis is more illuminating about the ‘economic’ thinking inspired in Charlemagne by the monastic way of life than about the traditional practices of sovereigns and the magnates during the greater part of the Early Middle Ages. In the tenth century, an analysis of the itineraries of the Ottonian sovereigns still highlights the role of particular sites, ‘… notably strategically placed monasteries. These fed, accommodated and supplied the royal court, as well as securing and maintaining corridors of transit’ (Bernhardt, 1993: 136–176; McKitterick, 2008: 172). The ideal of self-sufficiency that followed from the domestic management advocated in the palace and in the monastery underwent widespread dissemination, in that the properties forming part of treasury and ecclesiastical capital assets and organized along this principle never ceased circulating between the aristocracy, the king and the Church, through gift, secularization and confiscation.

The intensification of seigniorial domination The rise in the militarist imperialism of the Franks and the increasing complexity of State and ecclesiastical structures swelled the ranks of the aristocratic pyramid and revived a demand for the wherewithal of war, bureaucracy and religious institutions, not seen since the end of Roman power in the West. ‘This was the period of the most ambitious public power on the European continent up to the late thirteenth century’ (Wickham, 1997: 196). Satisfying that demand took two paths. 1) Proceeding from a quantitative logic, the rise in the demand for ‘staple goods’ and services, for cereals, wine, horses and other livestock, as well as building materials, was translated in the Frankish Empire into an escalation of levies. The Rizana (Slovenia) judgement in 804, arising from the complaint of local notables to Charlemagne’s missi 21

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about the oppression of the local Frankish duke John and his agents, gives us a good illustration of this within a ‘loose lordship’ region: where the king’s vassals succeeded the officials of the Byzantine emperor, we can observe a disproportionate rise in taxes on livestock (from 1 to 30 per cent!), the requisitioning of horses and fodder, as well as the demand for new work duties in the curtis and the seigniorial vineyards, for the construction and maintenance of buildings, and for heavy carts for land transport and for transport by boat (travelling as far as Venice and Ravenna, and into Dalmatia). The excesses denounced by the Istrian notables prefigured the confusion of public and private prerogatives to the benefit of the powerful, a confusion itself denounced by the capitularies from 840 onwards, and by ecclesiastical sources in the tenth and eleventh centuries, who fulminated against the ‘bad customs’ and extortion of all kinds by the ‘violence’ of the secular lords (I placiti del ‘Regnum Italiae’, no. 17; commentaries by Depreux, 2002: 221–224; Innes, 2009: 42–45). The political domination exercised by Duke John, based on a range of public extortions and more or less legitimate requisitions of wealth and work duties, did not require the sort of establishment of regulated relationships of production that the large-estate system represented. 2) That system proceeded in a different spirit. Its spread – geographically restricted (see below) – led to the enlargement of seigniorial estates (through clearing) to increase the production of cereals and wine. More extensive, the arable land was not exploited by mainly day labourers, fed or paid, or by means of farming capital (working livestock, ploughing tools) constituted directly by the lord, but by the systematic and massive transference of work supplied by tenants to the benefit of the demesne. The creation of large blocks of arable land in this reserve (called ‘culturae’ – ‘coutures’ in French, literally ‘the ploughed field’ – and sometimes exceeding several dozen hectares) was made possible by the institution of boon-work ploughing (opera corrogata) carried out collectively by the tenants with their own oxen. The genesis of the landed-estate system thus proceeded from a qualitative logic, which was applied above all to the organization of work and (not directly) to the intensity of levying. It was one thing to submit to military service (ost), to fulfil one’s obligations to the king, to ensure his household’s standard of living by requisitions of all kinds and to take advantage of royal patronage and public functions, as was the case with Duke Jean, without having to interfere in the activities of the cultivators; it was quite another to organize a vast landed property rationally and systematically, and to supervise its production, the work and what the cultivators supplied, as was the case with the abbot of a monastery or the steward of a villa or a palace! In this sense, the extortions of Duke John continued the seigniorial tribute system of the Merovingian era (fifth to the eighth century), but with greater levels of violence, arbitrariness and predation; for its part, the large-estate system demanded a reorganization of labour and the levying mechanisms linked to it. The area over which the large-estate system was spread corresponds very largely with the region under review here, with the exception of Scandinavia in the north; indeed, the principle was rapidly adopted in the ninth and tenth centuries in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, under the influence of the Carolingian concept of public power and with the strengthening of royal power from Alfred the Great onwards. The system became embodied both in the Empire’s central regions (between the Loire and the Rhine), 22



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where the power of the Carolingian aristocratic elites ‘was (the most) strong, where their presence was immediate and permanent, and where their needs were thus great,’ and in the large treasury and ecclesiastical holdings carved out by the Franks after the conquest of Saxony and northern Italy (Verhulst, 1983: 141). In these regions, the domestic economy (rather than that of the large estate) could directly or indirectly involve a majority of agricultural producers installed on landed properties of treasury or ecclesiastical origin. Ecclesiastical or public demand (supplies for the army, transport within the large-estate areas of circulation, parish tithes, etc.) weighed very heavily: the obligations of royal service were an imposition on all freemen and their often excessive weight pushed a section of peasant farmers into the ranks of those protected by the Church or into dependence on aristocrats. Around 800, an aristocratic and domestic logic thus dominated the relationships of production in the central regions and in the primary sectors of the Frankish economy: the production of cereals and specific products and materials, such as wine, salt, iron and arms. The agricultural production of the demesne, particularly cereals, was thus greatly structured by aristocratic demand. It is interesting to compare the data of the polyptyque (inventory of rents and dues in kind, money and labour established by a church in the Early Middle Ages) of Saint-Germain-des-Prés with the deliveries fixed a few years later in 829 by abbot Hilduin for the abbey’s conventual mensa (portion of abbey revenue accruing to the community of monks). Annually, the monks received 1 620 muids (hogsheads) of wheat, i.e. a little over twelve muids per monk (around 600 litres, or 200 kg a year). This consumption was covered by the resources of the dominical lands of a single landed-estate group (the largest in the polyptyque), i.e. Villemeux, the twenty-one demesne furlongs of which covered around 500 hectares of arable land. For their part, the twenty-four mills situated on the Eure and the Blaise in the Villemeux region delivered 1 490 muids of cereals of all kinds and 187 muids of cereals to be used for brewing The tenants of Saint-Germain did not pay ground rent in cereals, with the exception of the tithe and the approximately 200 holdings that supplied spelt for the horses. The overall production of the Saint-Germain landed estates exceeded 12 000 muids (Elmshäuser and Hedwig, 1993: 340–346, 462–465). In total, with the dues of the mills, the total reached 17 000 muids, or over 8 500 hectolitres.2 On the rich silty soils of the Ile-de-France plateau, the monks could orient their production towards wheat by calling on their tenants to perform boon work, but without having to count on supplies from the peasants to cover their consumption of cereals. On the contrary, the harvests of the dominical lands allowed them to accumulate considerable surpluses (over 90 per cent of the quantities gathered in). A good proportion of the foodstuffs were eaten on the spot by the labourers (paid in kind) or were allocated to royal use, notably for military expeditions, as well as to the vassals armed by the abbey (see below). But this surplus could also be traded on markets of inter-regional – even international – importance, as in Paris, close to ­Saint-Germain-des-Prés, or the port of Quentovic, thanks to transportation boon work. 2

A muid (hogshead) is taken as a measure of 50 litres (Hocquet, 1985: 664; Devroey, 1987: 83).

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The orienting of landed-estate production towards an inter-regional exchange economy appeared even more clearly in the case of wine production, in particular in the zone of the Paris basin, contiguous with regions to the West (the British Isles) and the North (Frisia, Scandinavia), which lacked vineyards. At the beginning of the Middle Ages, the production of local wines, destined for the aristocrats, was entrusted to winemakers, often slaves, who themselves cultivated small, scattered parcels of land, without their masters intervening directly in the production. As in the cereal sector, the area covered by western vineyards expanded from the seventh century on. By this time, Paris and its region had become a major wine entrepôt. The increased size of vineyards and their cultivation were made possible by the integration of specialized work supplied by tenant peasant-winegrowers who, in addition to their own vineyard, also cultivated individual vineyard plots by way of boon work; moreover, they engaged in small-scale food-crop cultivation and, above all, livestock rearing, the products resulting from the winegrowing and livestock rearing finding their way to market. The grape harvest and transportation were ensured by the general impressment of other tenants. At Saint-Germain-des-Prés, vineyards were present on around two-thirds of the estates inventoried, producing either a modest amount for on-the-spot consumption or, as the terroir’s main activity, an abundant surplus. During the 820s, the abbey had at its disposal over 12 000 muids of wine from its own dominical vineyards and by way of seigniorial annuities, of which 2 000 muids were consumed by the monks and their guests, leaving a surplus of 10 000 muids (around 5 000 hectolitres). The vineyards of the holdings produced a net surplus of at least the same quantity, placing the monks and their tenants on an equal footing in terms of supplying the market (Devroey, 2007). Money thus circulated within and around the large estates. Since the monetary reforms of Pepin the Third and Charlemagne, pennies (denarii) appeared in the peasants’ burden of dues, though this was not yet the case in the eighth-century laws of the Bavarians and the Alamans. Within a ‘classic’ large estate, the practical details and forms of seigniorial levying and the logic of institutional demand brought players other than the large property owners into the networks of the exchange economy, such as the innumerable local intermediaries who acted on the fringes of and inside the local communities to organize agricultural production, provide material (the millers) and spiritual (the priests) services and ensure the levying of property tax and the fulfilment of work obligations. These mediators retained a part of the wealth extracted from the peasantry and were in a position to accumulate sums of money and agricultural substance that could be spent on wage payments or on the market.

The peasantry and agricultural production To the north of the Loire, the activities of local dependent peasants were ordered by law and local custom, which regulated the obligations and rights of the tenants. Besides the dominical reserve, the rest of the property consisted of land divided into tenured plots of family farms (hufe in German, holding in English, manse in French) occupied by dependent peasants and their families (mansionarii). In exchange for their 24



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tenure, they discharged a number of obligations established by custom, which were composed of fees in money and dues in produces, and labour services. Generally, a free holding (mansus ingenuus) was first of all subject to a significant contribution for the commutation of army service ((h)ostilicium) and other public obligations, combined with private fees representing ground rent and honour gifts. The whole constitutes the rent paid in kind (agricultural and livestock products; raw materials or semi-finished artisanal wood, metal or textile products; finished products) or in cash, or in both. The holding also provided labour service, mainly participation in the demesne’s farming, local cartage or long-distance transport (angaria). The typical cost burdens of a servile holding (mansus servilis) linked several dues in produce with the obligation to supply the master with labour for a certain number of days per week – normally half of the time available (three days) – or even to work according to the master’s will; for bondmen who had to provide for their own needs themselves, half of the time available for work was a maximum beyond which it was difficult to go. To organize the transfers of labour for the benefit of the reserve, the law of the landed estate made use of the boon-work plot, a plot of small size, defined as sections of arable land, pasture or vineyard divided up on the demesne, whose working was undertaken entirely by the tenants. The expansion of cereal farming in the large seigniorial estates had led to an increase in transfers of labour at the end of the eighth century, with the spreadof the system of collective boon-work ploughing (opera corrogata) in the northeast. The long yoking of oxen (two to four pairs of animals coming in general from several ploughmen’s holdings) to a plough was used to plough the demesne furlongs (which often exceeded a hundred hectares). It accompanied the spread of the manor system in England from the tenth century on. During the ninth century, boon-work plots represented no more than 2–3 per cent of the dominical lands of the large cerealgrowing villae of the Paris basin (Delatouche, 1977: 95–96). Between the Loire and the Rhine, boon work appeared as the structuring element of seigniorial levying, weighing so heavily that it perhaps helped to destabilize certain peasant farms and to impair the system. Witness to this are the fragmentation of holdings (proportionally dividing the burden of attendant boon work) and the crowding of households on tenures in the Frankish polyptyques. At Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the amount of arable land and meadow that figured in the composition of most peasant holdings evolved in a disturbing, even worrying manner, as the holdings which were the most extensive in arable land were also those where the hayfields were the smallest. The intensity of boon-work levying during the period under review raises the question of the degree of autonomy of dependent peasant farms. What was the nature of their production; what autonomy did the producer enjoy in crop choice; once the ‘duties’ owed to their master had been fulfilled, what capacity did those farms have to play an economic role possibly oriented towards the market? The replies contain a high level of conjecture and uncertainty. From the ninth century on, the very nature of landed-estate customs obliged the tenant of a large estate to gear his productive activities towards the market: in any case, to produce surplus to sell, in order to obtain the money necessary for cash fees. The methods of collecting ground rent varied considerably, though, according to the needs of the large landowners (depending on such 25

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000

Table 2.1 Composition of peasant holdings at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, early ninth century Arable land, in bonniers3

Vineyards, in arpents

Hayfields, in arpents

 6.9

1.1

1.4

Ch. 19: Esmans

14.3

2.4

1.0

Ch. 9: Villemeux

13.3

0.0

0.2

Ch. 11: Neuilly-sur-Eure

11.6

0.0

3.1

Ch. 5: Verrières

 3.4

1.6

2.2

Ch. 4: Gagny

 3.5

1.6

0.4

Ch. 8: Nogent-l’Artaud

 4.4

1.2

2.8

All the holdings in the polyptyque Estates where the holdings consisted most of arable land

Estates where the holdings consisted least of arable land

Source: Elmshäuser and Hedwig, 1993: 486.

factors as the distance of holdings from the centre or the presence of rare resources) and the regional economic environment (cash levying reached particular high levels in the Paris area). It is clear that peasant producers of rare or sought-after products such as wine, took advantage of their position and that mixed farms linking viticulture, livestock rearing and subsistence cereal-growing could achieve real prosperity. Thus, the wine-producing peasants of Saint-Germain handled money pretty well. On average, in the Paris region, the rent in money was over seventeen pennies; the tenants who paid the highest levels (thirty pennies or more) were also those who had the least amount of arable land (around five ha), but had the most pasture land and vineyards (Elmshäuser and Hedwig, 1993: 496–497). But what of less advantaged regions? Was each peasant family in a position to consume a pig each year (which represented some sort of nourishment ideal among the peasantry up to the twentieth century), after delivering the live animal earmarked for the lord? Was all the energy available after the demands of the seigniorial levy had been met applied to strictly subsistence activity? 3

26

The Medieval bonnier was a measure of surface. While variable and difficult of conversion, it would, at Saint-Germain, have amounted to around 138 ares (following Guilhiermoz, 1913). The arpent, which was a specific measure for meadow and vineyards, seems to have amounted to around 8.65 ares.



Agricultural production, distribution and consumption around the North Sea, 500–1000 | Chapter 2

Agricultural production, between lords and peasants, beyond the Frankish world These comments do not hold well for other areas, i.e. where autonomous peasants were in the majority and, according to Chris Wickham’s hypothesis, ‘lived better’. The unevenness and the nature of the documentary record unfortunately preclude any illustration of the level at and the manner in which agricultural producers were involved in exchange systems, but we can nonetheless sketch out the structures of production in those areas. Knowledge of England up to the seventh century is almost exclusively through the archaeological record (Faith, 1997); by 450 at the latest, and even before the Germanic invasions, the Roman agricultural structures (villae) there had disappeared; during the period following the influx of the Anglo-Saxon populations, material culture remained very poor, with –almost everywhere – a dramatic simplification of artefacts and the general disappearance of ceramics. Bound up with all this was a fragmentation of the political structures, marked by a tribal form of organization within not very extensive kingdoms; within this context, the archaeological record does not attest to there having been a powerful aristocracy imposing its economic domination on a peasantry obliged to stump up heavy land rents. In the majority of cases, the peasantry, largely independent, was required to pay certain quite light tribute fees, but insufficient for elites to establish any spectacular economic domination. For all that, peasant society was not egalitarian, as it had slaves serving its households. The absence of pressure from aristocratic elites probably explains the above-mentioned modest nature of material culture, with scant circulation of artisanal and agricultural produce; what we have here is a virtually autonomous peasant economy (peasant mode of farming), in which the peasants themselves decided the orientation of their farming, a feature of which was little circulation and trading of rural produce. It was a society doubtlessly also characterized by better peasant ‘well-being’ and, in any case, by lower investment in work. Thereafter, England slowly evolved towards a model close to that of the continent and varying according to geography. The intensification of political pressure on the non-free and subsequently on the free began in the eighth century, continuing in the ninth to become spectacular in the tenth; it went hand in hand with a concentration of land and wealth in the hand of the elites, ecclesiastical and then royal, and an increase in exchange, first noticeable on the island’s eastern coast. Once again, variability was the order of the day: in Mercia (the future Midlands), for example, this process took longer, but led, after the year 1000, to the creation of tighter village structures and to the birth of an open-field landscape (in which agricultural practices and geography also played a part: see Williamson, 2005); on England’s eastern coast (in East Anglia), the peasantry maintained a relative independence, developed a more dispersed model of habitation and held on to its rights over its land, despite aristocratic assertiveness, this last not going to the lengths of the peasant subjugation seen in the Midlands and the south of England (Faith, 1997). The structures of farming in Germany, to the east of the Rhine, and in Frisia are more difficult to delineate, such was the variability of the situations which prevailed there, and so scarce is the documentary record. The situation in Frisia is essentially 27

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000

known from after the territory’s integration by the Pippinids and the Carolingians: we find there several royal or ecclesiastical estates around Utrecht and Groningen, as well as zones given over to the peasant mode of farming, with no doubt the same effects as those observed in England, in terms equally of agricultural production (less intense) as of internal exchange processes (this is not, of course, true for Dorestad which was essentially an international forum, channelling the surplus that originated from the Rhineland region). To the east of the Rhine, before the Carolingian expansion, ‘classical’ structures did not apply (Verhulst, 1988; Rösener, 1989). Here and there, bipartite estates can be discerned, the number of which increased under the Carolingians and in which the importance of servile work was pre-eminent, boon work in particular. These estates were doubtless preceded chronologically by smaller estates worked by slave labour; but existing side by side with them were autonomous peasant farms, detached from the influence of the Rhineland aristocrats and probably functioning according to the tribute model mentioned above in respect of England. It was predominantly the large ecclesiastical and royal centres – very numerous on the banks of the Mosel, Main and Rhine, and in Thuringia, Franconia and Bavaria, that had to be oriented, at least partially, towards satisfying market demand through the sale of surplus produce (see below). These ecclesiastical centres, as well as enterprising secular lords, launched initiatives to extend the land under cereals, at the expense of woods, witness to which are pollen analyses and toponymic evidence, as for example in Thuringia, from 750 on (around Fulda; the incursions into the Odenwald, undertaken by the Abbey of Lorsch: see Lohrmann, 1988). The coming to power of the Carolingians also coincided with a worsening of peasant conditions. In Brittany, the land was primarily in the hands of free peasants and local notables (machtierns), before its incorporation into the holdings of the large ecclesiastical establishments and its cession by tenancy at will (Davies, 1988). What the situation was in Scandinavia before the year 1000, lastly, is unknown to historians, due to a lack of documentary evidence. Although there were no manors in Scandinavia in the Viking Age, there were largescale holdings, and kings’ halls certainly existed that had to be supplied with goods from a dependent population. It is possible to locate places in Denmark where, from an early time, the interplay of cult, power and the exchange of goods created various degrees of centrality. An early and splendid example is Gudme, on southeast Funen (A.D. 200–550), but the largest is the ‘royal manor’ of Tissø (600–1050), which also included some kind of market. Uppåkra, in Skåne, five kilometres from Lund, is also a large example ( Jorgensen, 2003).

2.2  Food processing within the rural framework The processing of cereals after harvesting depended on type and storage method, as well as on climatic conditions, the destination of surplus produce, the type of land ownership and the needs of the proprietors. The systems for storing produce varied according to region. In the North, dressed cereals, barley and oats, probably destined for winter fodder, were stored in long houses, whereas rye was stored in silos. Barns, too, were used for storage. In the South, where silos were more numerous, there was 28



Agricultural production, distribution and consumption around the North Sea, 500–1000 | Chapter 2

Illustration 2.2  Pair of scales from the Vikings, Gotland, 10th or 11th century

a large variety of storing methods, including raised lofts, silos and barns (Hamerow, 2002: 26, 28, 36–38). After harvesting, the ears of grain could be left to dry in stacks. The naked wheat was cleaned by threshing before being stored on the spot or transported to a central site: at Maisons, close to Paris, in the 820s, each holding dependent on the Saint-Germain-desPrés abbey had to process twelve muids (hogsheads, around 7.2 hl) of wheat and rye within the seigniorial barn before transporting it by cart to the monastery (Polyptyque 29

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000

of Saint-Germain, XXV, 3). On-site storage in silos or grain lofts was enabled through the existence of veritable collective complexes for grain processing. At Montours, in Brittany, cereals were hulled and winnowed in a vast, empty space rich in plant macrowaste, surrounded by ovens for drying or roasting, and storage structures (Catteddu et al., 2001: 217). There were numerous open-air hearths and batteries of domestic ovens that could be used for drying and roasting the grain (Nissen-Jaubert, 2006: 180). After 765, the introduction of the obligatory tithe in the Frankish Empire encouraged the construction of collective barns in the villages, often linked to the parish church and to the priest’s residence. They assured storage before the distribution of the tithe, and could also serve as collective grain store at local level. The increase in the number and the capacity of cereal-storing systems is, in addition, a more general phenomenon observed throughout the European plain from the eighth century onwards (Hamerow, 2002: 145–146). In the barns, it was easier to stock the cereals in the form of ears, which could be threshed as and when needed. The royal villae of the Annappes region (c. 800) were equipped with two systems: ‘épiers’ or granaries (spicaria) and barns (scurae, granecae). The thickness of the plant envelope of spelt allowed grain to be conserved beyond the year it was harvested, as is shown by the inventory of the royal villae grain lofts around Annappes, which stored the harvests of two years. Whereas spelt and the other dressed cereals destined for bread making must be husked before milling, their particular fitness for conservation might explain the large presence of spelt on the seigniorial reserves during the eighth to the tenth centuries in the north-east of Francia for the logistical needs of the Frankish Empire (as was already the case to the rear of the Rhineland’s limes in Antiquity). From the tenth century on, spelt began an age-long retreat into sanctuaries few and far between, in the face of free-threshing wheat, wheat, and above all rye (Devroey, 1989 and 1990). ‘Christianity took bread wheat and the plow (i.e. plough) first across Europe, and then across the world, as hallmarks of the new faith’ (Margaritis, Jones, 2007: 170). Among Christians, bread was the foremost means of consuming cereals, not only in the religious communities, of course, where dietary norms were expressed in weight of bread, but also amongst the aristocrats and, further, among their obligors and protégées. The hand-outs of food at the gates of palaces and monasteries or of institutions that provided assistance at local level included bread, as indeed did the emoluments distributed during boon work, which obviously does not mean that the peasants did not eat mash and polenta, which required less processing. The production of flour thus appeared as an imperative equally important as access to wine, the second element (after oil and milled wheat) of the Christian food triad; that importance is also shown by the medieval use of the Latin farinarius to designate the mill. The plan of Sankt-Gall shows the ideal disposition of the facilities for treating and processing cereals within a large monastery: a building with two naves to house the monks’ bakery and brewery is ideally situated next to a three-naved building (also providing accommodation for the workers) with a drying facility, a room equipped with two pounders (to separate the grains from their envelopes and to grind them to prepare the mash and the flatbread), a room fitted with two millstones (probably pounders and hand mills), and a 30



Agricultural production, distribution and consumption around the North Sea, 500–1000 | Chapter 2

Table 2.2 Proportion of seigniorial lands and tenures benefiting from a mill within a radius of 10 kilometres, ninth century % seigniorial lands

% dependant peasant holdings

Saint-Pierre de Lobbes

91%

83%

Saint-Germain-des-Prés

91%

96%

Montier-en-Der

90%

82%

Saint-Remi de Reims

84%

66%

Saint-Bertin

74%

56%

Wissembourg

50%

42%

Polyptyques

Source: Champion, 1996.

brewery grain loft (Horn, 1975; corrected Comet, 1992: 377–378). At Vitry-en-Artois (c. 800), the royal palace’s kitchen and bakery were both in one block (Capitulary de villis, description of Vitry: 53). For Marc Bloch, the water mill was an ancient invention, but ‘medieval in terms of the epoch of its genuine expansion’ (Bloch, 1935: 806). Slavery would have blocked its spread in Antiquity and, with the progressive scarcity of a servile workforce and the increasingly widespread establishment of ex-slaves on tenures, people would have lacked millstones. Archaeological work of the last three decades has refuted this hypothesis in demonstrating that water mills were widely used in the western provinces of the Roman Empire from the first century A.D. (Wikander, 2007: 149); the spread of the water mill was slow, but regular, and began in Gaul in Antiquity. Seigniorial sources indicate that the eighth to tenth centuries saw the establishment of hydraulic mills reaching a high level in the Frankish Empire. In the region between the Meuse and the Seine, more than half the sites located by the eighteenth century had already been equipped with water mills by the ninth, 19 per cent no longer had mills by the eighteenth and 28 per cent no mills in the ninth! Basing himself on the geographical distribution of the mills, Étienne Champion has shown that the large majority of the Carolingian ecclesiastical seigneuries had access to a mill situated within a radius of ten kilometres (Champion, 1996: 39–40). The question of the macro-economic interpretation of such acceleration is not an easy one. On the lands of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which were exceptionally well equipped (eighty-four mills, or seventeen per 1 000 ha of reserve), a majority of the mills probably dated from before 800. The abbot Irminion (†before 829) was responsible for the construction of seven of them. At Saint-Wandrille de Fontenelle, the overall inventory for the year 787 mentions a total of sixty-seven mills for 3 000 holdings (Devroey, 2003: 90; Arnoux, 2008: 701). The wealth of information drawn from the 31

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000

polyptyques should not lead us to attribute this situation to the spread of the largeestate system, as there are multiple indications that, during the same period, in regions where the great-estate system was unknown (such as Ireland in the seventh century) there was an increase in the number of methods used for milling grain , which makes one think rather of a rise in agricultural surplus (Astill, 1997: 198). A good indicator is the great dissemination of millstones from Eifel throughout the coastal regions of the North Sea in the eighth century, at the very moment when the local manufacture of millstones was progressing very strongly in Norway (Lebecq, 1983: 77–78, Parkhouse, 1997; Grenne et al., 2008). On the basis of the size of the finds, regional demand was as strong for individual hand mills as for stones of 60 to 120cm destined for large water mills, which is to say all segments of agriculture, from the family farm to the aristocratic villa. The growth in the number of mills continued unabated until the twelfth century, when watercourse use appears to have become excessive. After 1200, it was above all the increase in damming to create artificial bodies of water, equally used for pisciculture that enabled mill productivity in the West to improve. No medieval mill is known of in Anglo-Saxon England before the end of the seventh century. There was nevertheless a rapid ‘catching-up’, as shown by the recent finds of around a dozen mills dating from the seventh to the end of the tenth century. The England of the Domesday Book (1086) possessed as many mill-equipped sites in the eleventh as in the fourteenth century. With the exception of those in the North (less well documented), every watercourse appears to have been put to use (Langdon, 2000: 76). Archaeology reveals that artisans capable of building, supplying with water and maintaining such devices were to be found in the rural environment. Moreover, it attests to the production of machines that were difficult to build and put to work, such as floating mills. The construction of hydraulic works, canals, reaches and dykes to lead water to the mills continued without interruption from the fifth century on, and that is not to forget the uncompleted works of the Fossa carolina canal, which was to permit navigation from the Rhine to the Danube. Water and a mill had to be available within the confines of monasteries to keep the monks sheltered from the world (Lohrmann, 1990: 42–44; Champion, 1996, 24–25; Devroey, 2003: 136–137). At Saint-Denis and at Corbie around 820–830, at Saint-Bertin before 850 and at Lobbes between 835 and 864, the abbots had what were veritable works of art constructed, often at significant cost: at Saint-Denis, for example, the shallow canal drawing water from the Crould river was around eight kilometres long and contrived a drop of around three metres. But it is perfectly possible to imagine much slighter structures that have left little archaeological trace. The concentration of mills around the large Carolingian abbeys is explained by the inflow of grain towards the central points of the landed-estate networks of those abbeys – indeed, grain was one of the two chief products (wine was the other) carried over those networks. At Lobbes in the ninth century, there were a mill and two breweries within the monastery precincts, to which must be added the five mills and six other breweries between Lobbes and the nearby fortification of Thuin on the Sambre; other than the monks, over 120 families of prebendaries ‘(i.e. poor people 32



Agricultural production, distribution and consumption around the North Sea, 500–1000 | Chapter 2

granted a prebend from the monastery’s resources) were spread out between the two sites (Devroey, 1986a: xciv–cviii)! At Corbie in 820, the mills provided the abbey with close to 1 200 hl of grain converted into flour each year. The density of the local mill network also indicates that the landed estates’ stewards would arrange milling according to demand, i.e. in respect of distributing bread or flour to the prebendaries, domestic slaves, daily workers and dependents fed by the master during their boonwork days; in effect the mills were amenities geared towards local consumption, flour being more difficult to conserve than grain and used to bake bread and flatbread. But the size of the income drawn by the monks from the right to mill shows that their own peasants, as well as outsiders, made large use of these seigniorial facilities. The most profitable mill of the Saint-Bertin abbey was installed at Thérouanne, where it was able to benefit from the proximity of an urban market (Polyptyque of SaintBertin, ch. 33: 23, 118). The mill was also the indispensable complement to the large, secular landed properties. Five are found at Annappes, with legal grain-measure standards, whereas the other villae in this district had none. At Old Windsor, close to an Anglo-Saxon royal palace, a deviation canal was cut in the eighth to ninth centuries from a meander in the Thames, to feed a vertical water-wheel mill (Wilson, 1962: 68). We can observe generally that a concentration of between 200 and 400 people could justify the construction of a water mill (Wikander, 2007: 149). Investment in production infrastructure such as mills was thus not specific to large aristocratic estates. The construction of mills seems to have been the preferred investment of minor aristocrats, rich citizens and rural notables such as priests, in so far as their revenues managed to escape in part the hazards of the harvest. Mills and breweries were thus installed on sites where flour and beer were consumed, inside monastic compounds, on rural estates or in the towns. The citing of flour-delivery amongst the cost burdens of non-free peasants at the same time bears witness to the use of hand mills by the poorest peasants and to the general use of bread (besides mash) in the basic diet of peasants. The baking of foodstuffs, bread and flatbread was part of the peasants’ daily life, as is demonstrated by the presence of hearths in most rural homes. Often individual up until the ninth century, ovens began to become collective pieces of equipment from the tenth and the eleventh on. Within the domestic sphere, the baking of bread was a woman’s task, but polyptyques show that, from the ninth century on, the task also fell to men; if this is a clue to the appearance of collective ovens separate from the family home, this change can be situated a century earlier. Beer, too – let us not forget – was a product of the processing of cereals, such as spelt, oats, wheat and particularly barley, which lends itself badly to bread making. Beer was a genuine ‘liquid meal’, a very rich source of proteins and vitamins, and easy to make within the domestic sphere; in the brewing of beer, barley was combined with hops from the tenth century on (Nissen-Jaubert, 2006: 178). Special schemes also allowed other fresh produce to be made available. Hélène Noizet estimates that there was a population of over 1 500 people gathered about the 200 canons of Saint-Martin de Tours, around 860. The abbey there owned a livestockbreeding centre (with sufficient pasture land) close to the city, which allowed needs to 33

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000

be met in terms of meat, animal fat, milk, cheese and butter, without large numbers of beasts having to be slaughtered before the winter and their meat salted in order to preserve it (Noizet, 2002). Saint-Martin also owned a nearby fishery. Within the obviously very specific context of landed estates appropriated directly to royal service, the capitulary De villis (780/800?) allows us to draw up a list of what the estate workshops produced: fat bacon, smoked meats, cured meat, salt pork, wine, vinegar, blackberry wine, cooked wine, garum (a fermented-fish sauce condiment), mustard, cheese, butter, malt, beer, mead, honey, wax and flour; all were capable of being produced locally, as were ewe, pig and bovine fat, and tallow and soap. Amongst slaughter animals, only bovines were driven on the hoof to provide for royal gatherings and the army. The meat of other animals was dried, salted or smoked. In the form of pork and fat bacon, pig meat dominated amongst the conserved provisions in the royal shops of the Annappes region (c.800), being in great demand amongst the elites. In the Merovingian era, a Reims bishop enquired about the price of pigs in the Metz region from his brother-bishop there, which confirms the existence of a market price allowing animals to be assessed according to their monetary value. The pig also occupied a prominent position in the fees paid by the peasants, in place of military service with the army or for the use of woods or as an honour gift. On the basis of paleo-zoological data, it would appear that livestock breeding by peasants was less to provide their own food (apart from the offal) than to satisfy the demands of the elites and sell on the market (see below). In most cases, the peasants delivered chiefly live (mainly immature) animals to the lord, the status of the animal being specified by its age, and often by a monetary equivalent. Salting was probably the pre-eminent method of preserving meat. In Francia, salt came from the sea coasts of the North Sea and the Channel or from inland salt marshes, such as the large extraction zone of Saulnois in Lorraine. It was the object of long-distance exchange, within landed-estate networks and strictly commercial channels, and of retail trade in the towns and the countryside (Bruand, 2002: 185–202).

2.3 Consumption: the nature of the agricultural products in demand; the structures of consumption Despite the commendable efforts of certain historians (Hagen, 2006), precise references to food remain rare. If the diet of the elites can be described relatively precisely, it is difficult to pronounce on the diet of the peasants. An English source from the end of the seventh century gives us a glimpse of what the demands of the elite in terms of food provisions might have been. According to the laws of the West Saxon king Ine, the fostre (the royal sustenance, pastus in Latin), the equivalent of the produce of ten hides, had to consist of ‘ten tuns of honey, three hundred round loaves of bread, twelve amber4 of ‘Welsh ale’ and thirty of ‘clear ale’, two adult cows or ten sheep, six geese, twenty chickens, ten cheeses, a full amber of butter, five salmon, twenty pounds 4

34

A unit of capacity, derived from the Latin amphora.



Agricultural production, distribution and consumption around the North Sea, 500–1000 | Chapter 2

Illustration 2.3  Feasting in late Anglo-Saxon England, ­second quarter of the 11th ­century, from an illustrated translation into Old English of the Book of Genesis, ­Canterbury

of fodder and a hundred eels’ (Law of Ine, ch. 70). This text is not an exact snapshot of what the elite consumed or even of what was demanded from the peasantry; the richest could also obtain imported produce – spices, olive oil, dried fruit, and sweet wines from the Mediterranean. For a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon king, drink represented the primary concern in terms of supplies: the importance of sharing practices in the exercise of power explains the accent placed on the provision of intoxicating drinks (Gautier, 2006: 196–209). In England, cereals and honey held a paramount position, which was otherwise occupied by wine in the drier regions of northern Gaul and the Rhineland, longer open to Mediterranean influences. For the Franks, at least from the eighth century on, beer was a drink unworthy of a potens (person of power) and this was well-known outside the Frankish world: the Capitulary of Redon tells of how the count of Rennes, Juhel Béranger (fl. 930 and 970), preparing to receive the envoys of the count of Anjou (thus a Frank), was worried that he had only beer and mead to offer them; it was only by a miracle that he was able to procure a large barrel of wine (Dion, 1959: 189–190). In Brittany (as in England and Scandinavia), a prince could thus have only mead and beer at his disposal – but that would not have satisfied the Franks. Texts of Frankish origin indeed confirm this fondness for wine. The Law of Chrodegang, drawn up in Metz for 35

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000

Frankish clerics, specifies the quantities of drink granted each day to each canon: the normal drink should be wine, ale being nothing but a last resort to be used ‘if it really happened that there was a lot less wine, and that the bishop or his subordinate could not produce the required quantity’ (Law of Chrodegang, ch.5). In a wine-growing region such as the Mosel valley, beer was thus known, but was not liked. There, the demarcation line between wine and beer was primarily of a social nature. Amongst the elites, ‘not serving wine generously to a guest is a failure to honour,’ as shown by a passage in the Gesta episcoporum Virdunensium (dating from a little after 916), which reports how, around 590, king Childebert II had given the bishop of Verdun, Saint Airy, a large endowment from wine-growing estates after the bishop had almost run out of wine to welcome him and his retinue in a dignified manner (Dion, 1959: 188–189); this type of anecdote increases in hagiographical literature from the eighth century on. Being able to procure wine and oil in small quantities for the mass and for other liturgical use was, moreover, a universal necessity in Christian countries. The Prüm abbey, which owned large vineyards close by and in the Rhine and Mosel valleys, possessed only four seigniorial breweries, for around fifty water mills. Its tenants received beer and bread in exchange for boon work, which indicates that beer was widely brewed beyond the seigniorial breweries for distribution among the peasants (Kuchenbuch, 1978: 134–135). Beer thus retained its value for the humblest, for whom it constituted an alternative method of preparing and consuming cereals of great nutritional value. Unlike wine, it was a local drink that, on the continent, did not circulate within the large-estate networks (Devroey, 2003: 137–138). The situation in England, Frisia and Scandinavia consequently differed from that which can be observed in the Frankish world, where ‘one began to cultivate wine as soon as possible […] even if only a product of poor quality was obtained’ (Bruand, 2002: 206), and where religious or secular seigniorial estates acquired vineyards in regions relatively far from the Paris basin (the regions of Paris, Laon, Soissons and Reims) and the Rhineland (the hillsides of the Rhine and the Mosel). In England, however, it seems that the ‘Welsh ale’ (wylisc ealoð) mentioned in numerous documents was not, as its name would suggest, a drink that was imported or transported over long distances: whilst prestigious and reputed, ‘Welsh ale’ is descriptive above all of a brewing method, doubtless involving honey or other condiments and sweeteners (Breeze, 2004). Nor do we really observe beer being traded or transported in Scandinavia. On the contrary, everything indicates that ale, including the most sophisticated, was brewed in the place it was consumed and for certain occasions, during fixed festivities such as jól (yule), as well as for occasional celebrations responding to events – marriages, births, funerals – in the lives of landowners, who, to mark them, gave feasts for their friends and relatives (Cahen, 1921: 52–55). With their ‘Welsh’ or ‘strong’ beers, the consumers in the North bear witness to another relationship with beer, which, for them, could be a sophisticated, prestigious and sought-after drink. Wine also attracted northern consumers, as is shown by the presence of Anglo-Saxons and Frisians at the great fair of Saint Denis (near Paris), by the re-use of Frankish barrels on the sites of Dorestad and Haithabu and by the presence of wine in the booty and tributes extracted from the Franks by the Vikings in the ninth century. 36



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The laws of Ine of Wessex also mention dues paid in honey, used above all in the manufacture of beverages (mead, as well as ‘Welsh ale’ and other drinks based on fruit); when used in cooking, it could lend certain preparations a prestigious character. For Aldhelm de Malmesbury, at the turn of the eighth century, ‘the royal dishes turn yellow and saffron-coloured’ under the action of honey, and the bee ‘manufactures an edible nectar (...) which enhances not a little all the delicious meals and the fatty and peppered sauces of the stews’ (Aldhelm, Enigmata, XX, v. 3; Id., Prosa de virginitate, V–VI). The association of honey and pepper – a rare and precious commodity – ought to be noted. Honey, indeed, lent certain dishes the sweetness of which the Early Middle Ages was deprived and also very fond of. It appears, furthermore, that the market value of honey was particularly high: in Saxony at the end of the Carolingian era, the equivalent of a half litre of honey was sold for eight pennies, the same price as for a cow and a muid of flour (Hamerow, 2002: 134). The beekeeper was thus part of an elite amongst semi-free men: in the Rectitudines, an English juridical compilation of around the year 1000, he lived far from his lord and was not subject to boon work, his obligations consisting essentially of fee payments due in exchange for leasing bee swarms (Rectitudines singularum personarum, 5; Harvey, 1993: 13). Cereal products also consisted of cereal consumed in the form of solid foods, primarily bread, mention of which, in the form of round loaves of bread, is very often found in the dues mentioned in Anglo-Saxon charters. It is not without significance that the oldest water mill found in England was situated at Tamworth, the ‘capital’ of the Mercian kings (Rhatz and Meeson, 1992). In Anglo-Saxon society, the lord (hlaford) was a ‘giver of bread loaves’, his wife (hlafdige) a ‘kneader of bread’ and the men gathered around their house (hlafoetan) were ‘eaters of bread’ (Bloch, 1939–40: vol.1, 282; Benveniste, 1969: vol. 2, 27–8). Certain texts offer a hierarchy of cereals: white wheaten bread is the bread of the elites, barley bread is that of the pauperes. The eighth-century hermit Guthlac ate nothing but barley bread (Félix, Life of Guthlac, ch. 28), a sign of asceticism in hagiography at least since The Life of Paul the Hermit by Saint Jerome. In some regions, cereal mash, even more than barley or mixed crop bread, represented the basic diet of the most modest strata of society, with a distinction at once both social and geographical, the more northerly regions no doubt accommodating themselves to it better than the heart of the Frankish world. The image of Alcuin feeding himself on mash at the table of Charlemagne whilst the others eat spiced meats is a recurrent one in Carolingian poetry. Nonetheless, it should not be deduced from this that oat mash was food served at a feast; on the contrary, Alcuin here appears as uncouth, even a barbarian from across the Channel: in others words as a simple man, a poor man content with some fortifying food whilst the feast is in full swing around him (Gautier, 2004). Against this, the angel who visits the Northumbrian monk Cuthbert leaves him three loaves of completely white bread (Bede, Prose Life of Cuthbert, ch. 7); it was white bread once more that, in their ‘barbarian folly’ the pagan sons of the East Saxon king Sæberht (early seventh century) wanted, to receive from bishop Mellitus, without for all that converting to Christianity (Bede, An Ecclesiastical History of the English People, II, 5). Like that for the elites, the bread for the Eucharist was without doubt white and made from wheat. 37

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The importance of meat-based food consumption for the elites has been repeated many times. For Montanari, despite the variety of the early medieval diet, there existed a clear distinction: ‘the potens eats a lot, and he eats meat; the pauper eats little, and he eats vegetables’ (Montanari, 1979: 463). Amongst the animals consumed – aside from game, which, although symbolically of great worth, represented only a very restricted part of the elites’ diet in the Early Middle Ages (Audoin-Rouzeau, 1995: 308–310) – three animals clearly dominated meat-based food consumption, over 85 per cent of which consisted of beef, pork and mutton, and that throughout the West (AudoinRouzeau, 2002). The status of these three nevertheless differed profoundly. Sheep, less valued, seem to have been delivered on the hoof by peasant households, after a long life serving their agricultural purpose, and then slaughtered at the site of consumption. It was only after the year 1000 that sheep farming experienced a significant upsurge and that was within a context of the development of industries, in which food was doubtless not the main motor of the boom (Sykes, 2006: 57). Pigs, which had no purpose other than as food, were often reared within the framework of the large estate by semi-free swineherds or slaves, and slaughtered at a much less advanced age, more often between one and two years, and rarely at as much as four years or more (Noddle, 1975: 255); the implication of this is poorer conservation of bones and possible under-representation in paleo-zoological statistics. Pork was the object of elite consumption, far from its traditional image of ‘the food of peasants’ (AudoinRouzeau, 1995: 288–293). During the Viking period, the rich communities of Sorte Muld (on the island of Bornholm) (Hamerow, 2002: 131), of Halberstadt (in today’s SaxeAnhalt), of Brandenburg and of Wiesenau (in today’s Brandenburg) (Audoin-Rouzeau, 1993: 354, 393) seem to have eaten pork more than any other meat. Unlike sheep and cattle, delivered on the hoof, pigs could be delivered already prepared, i.e. salted or dried, thus being the object of more selective consumption, as is inferred by the Rectitudines, which stipulate ‘that the swineherd also take care, after the slaughtering, to prepare and hang the slaughtered pigs well,’ and that he keep the viscera ‘once he has prepared the bacon’ (Rectitudines, 6.2 and 7); certainly, pork preserves badly and needs to be treated rapidly, but it needs to be treated by a professional with the requisite know-how. The lord himself was not interested in pig offal, but in the bacon and the meat cuts. The practice regarding cattle rearing within the framework of the landed estates and on more modest farms fell midway between the practices in respect of sheep and pig rearing. The remains of cattle found in excavations of early medieval sites throughout the whole of the West only rarely account for less than 40 per cent of all remains identified; given the weight of meat per individual animal, this demonstrates that cattle represented by far the most significant meat source (Audoin-Rouzeau, 2002: 80), and in every social category. Cattle bones are common at the most ordinary sites – as is the case for the ports established around the North Sea over the course of the seventh and eighth centuries (Saunders, 2001: 13) – and are significant, too, albeit to a lesser extent, at elite sites. In the countryside, cattle dominated widely, as they were a source of multiple products, of which meat was not the most important: this domination grew as the Early Middle Ages progressed (Yvinec, 1988: 126). The elites thus raised cattle themselves, but also received cattle in the form of taxes from the peasantry, or in the form 38



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of tributes: according to the Chronicle of Fredegar, the Saxons were obliged to deliver 500 cows each year to the Franks as a mark of submission (Chronicle of Fredegar, IV, 74). Poultry, too, had a place in the diet of the elites: although not very significant in terms of quantity, they always feature in paleo-zoological data. Chickens and geese appear in writings about the meals of the powerful, who could come by them through peasant fees – witness the Laws of Ine – as well as through rearing them centrally on their estates. Around the year 1000, the royal manor of Cheddar, in Somerset, was equipped with a curious structure that a parallel in the plan of Sankt Gallen has helped to identify as a hen house (Rahtz, 1979: 129–131) and that confirms the importance of poultry: the steward of the Cheddar estate could not be content with uncertain supplies through peasant fees, as he had to be able to provide visitors (the king or one of his officers, accompanied by a more or less large retinue) with food that befitted their status. Infrastructure facilities for rearing chickens, geese and ducks are also come across in two satellite hamlets of the royal palace of Annappes and in the prescriptions of the Capitulary de villis (ch. 19; description of Annappes, ibid.: 53). This is confirmed by a tractoria of Louis the Pious, in which he orders the various authorities obliged to receive imperial messengers to supply them with ‘twenty loaves of bread, two young animals, piglets or lambs, two chickens, ten eggs, a muid of drink, salt, and garden herbs’ (Formulae imperiales e curia Ludovici Pii, 7). The document also reveals immature animals and poultry as being typical food of the elites, as well as bread and ‘garden herbs’ – in other words, green vegetables (cabbage, onions, leeks) and indigenous condiments such as mint, mustard or sage – which in the main were grown centrally on the estate, as indicated by the inventory of the Annappes royal tax office and the chapter of the Capitulary de villis that lists the vegetable-plot plants a good steward should grow (Capitulary de villis, ch. 70). For the secular elite, these plants were doubtless intended in the first place to enhance the taste of other foodstuffs, and did not, as was the case under monastic rules, constitute the main food complement to bread (de Vogüé, 1964). The tractoria of Louis the Pious also specifies particular foodstuffs for the period of Lent: ‘four cheeses, two setiers of dried vegetables, fish.’ These are rich in protein and effectively replaced meat-based products during periods of fasting. Legumes (beans, peas and lentils) were very little valued: they had the reputation of being difficult to digest and are only rarely mentioned, even in practical documents. They were nonetheless widely grown (Banham, 1990: 167–182), albeit that those levying fees ate them only sparingly. They were food for the poor, as Massimo Monanari has observed for northern Italy (Montanari, 1979: 163–164). It was quite a different matter as regards fish, even though the Early Middle Ages predated the period that saw the development of fishing on the high seas (Hoffmann, 1996 and 2000; Gautier, 2007). During the Early Middle Ages, freshwater fish were the norm, sea fish enjoying considerable prestige because of their rarity; the reverse was true during the Late Middle Ages, when, thanks to the development of conservation techniques, salt-water fish became less rare and more abundant, and when freshwater fish, judged more delicate, were consumed on rarer and more prestigious occasions, besides serving to vary the menu during 39

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Lent (Dyer, 1994: 104–105). How then did the elite obtain the fish they needed? Freshwater fish, fished in open waters or kept in royal fish-ponds, were probably eaten fresh (in accordance with aristocratic standards), sold on the spot or transported to central locations after summary conservation treatment (Capitulary de villis, ch. 21; descriptions of Annappes and Somain: 53, 55). The emphasis placed on the control of waters in formulations of ownership contracts was not a simple reminiscence of Roman law, but proof of the importance – for the elites – of a local resource for water power and fishing. The mention of fish amongst dues in produce (eels are mentioned amongst products delivered by mills, trout amongst the payments made by peasant holdings in the Ardennes) probably refers to dried, pickled or smoked products (for example, the salmon transported by horse from the estates of the Rhine to the abbey of Prüm in 893, in the same way as bed linen or linen cloths). However, it was only at the very end of the period (from around the year 1000 in Germania and in the east of Gaul, later in the other regions considered here) that fish wells and ponds were developed (at first mainly in monasteries), allowing for a regular supply of freshwater fish, particularly carp (Bérard, 1988; Benoît, 2002: 229). The presence on the coasts of the North Sea of properties belonging to the very numerous Frankish and Anglo Saxon religious institutions nonetheless suggests that a part of the indispensable supply of food for times of fast consisted of sea fish, although the paleo-zoological data seem to indicate that the products of sea fishing did not penetrate very far inland in respect of ordinary consumption, at least not before the tenth century; herring was encountered between the seventh and tenth centuries in the wics of York, Ipswich, London, Hamwic and Haithabu (Barrett et al., 2004: 622). However, the migratory species which then dominated the rivers of northern Europe were sufficiently rare to exclude fish from the main channels of circulation for ‘staple goods’ (cereals, wine) in the ninth century. The rapid advances made by archaeologists over the last fifteen years enable us to date the burgeoning of a pan-European fish trade to the final decades of the tenth century, with the beginning of sea fishing for herring and several species of the cod family (Barrett et al., 2004). Beached cetaceans also represented a source of fat and lawful flesh during periods of fasting, much appreciated at the turn of the millennium, but cetaceans were also being increasingly hunted, as is suggested by the finds at Flixborough (Lincolnshire) (Dobney, 2007: 206–209), and were the object of that trade which Rouen merchants and Norwegian fishermen seem to have specialized in (IV Ælthered, 2.5: Gardiner, 1997). A point to notice is the existence of weirs, light wicker structures that served to catch principally eels and secondarily salmon, shad and other migratory fish (Bond, 1999). They are found on a royal estate in the Ardennes and in the villae belonging to Prüm and Corvey (Hoffmann, 2000: 366). Sea fish, whether taken from the foreshore or from the weirs, were in general subject to fee payments. In this respect, a charter of St. Peter Priory, Bath, dating from the mid-eleventh century, specified that the inhabitants of the Tidenham estate had to surrender ‘one fish in two and all rare fish of value: sturgeon, porpoise, herring or sea fish’ (Robertson, 1939: no. 109, 204–206). The Tidenham estate was situated on a tongue of land between the Severn estuary and the lower Wye, and the peasants who maintained the weirs there 40



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could thus consume eels and freshwater fish, once they had delivered the lord his dues; it may have been that there was some sort of lease, with the lord constructing the weir and entrusting it to the peasant community in return for half the fish. However, the large fish that sometimes swam up the Wye and were taken in the weirs were considered too prestigious to be left to the peasants and had to go to the monks’ tables. Dairy products were commonly mentioned amongst the payments of dues and were widely consumed by the elites who levied them. They were also the object of local trade, judged sufficiently lucrative to be regulated by an English king, more particularly in a code from around the year 1000: ‘the smeremangestrae who sell cheese and butter’ on the London market had to pay two pennies (denarii) each year for the right to trade (IV Æthelred, 2.12). For the legislator, these sellers were women, doubtless involved in relatively local trade, engaged in by the producers themselves from farms around the town. The Rectitudines similarly assume that cheese was made by women and utilize a feminine word to designate the people who specialized in this activity (Rectitudines, 16) (Fell, 1986: 47). The level of taxation on these products was consequently less high than on products whose trade was both more distant and more lucrative: the same code demands six shillings (solidi) for each boat transporting craspois (salted whale), wine or fish amongst the cargo.

2.4 The dynamics of transfers of agricultural goods; the development of elite demand The demanders of agricultural produce, producers and population fluctuations before the seventh century Western society before the year 1000 remained largely an agrarian society in which more than nine out of ten individuals were direct producers – through their own farming efforts – of the agricultural products they consumed; to obtain the products they were lacking, they resorted to exchange, a frequent occurrence in the countryside, or to other expedients, such as exploiting the sylve (forest). Given the lack of sources, however, it is most difficult to characterize demand on the part of rural people producing largely for their own consumption. Agricultural production was influenced quantitatively by general fluctuations in population, more particularly by the two great demographic cycles that occurred in the West: a marked decline in population between the fourth and seventh centuries, followed from the mid seventh century on by slow growth that accelerated with the approach of the year 1000. The contraction was particularly severe in the towns, reducing accordingly transfers and the demand of the sections of the population that were not directly or indirectly involved in agricultural production. Whereas property tax constituted the principal source of the transfers of wealth that accrued to the benefit of the elites who held power in the Roman empire, its gradual decline from the year 400 coincided with a sharp reduction of the pressure exerted on peasant farmers and a general ‘impoverishing’ of the elites. These changes were translated into a contraction of the 41

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areas of circulation (Ward-Perkins, 2005 and Wickham, 2005). What circulation there was of agricultural goods was thus essentially to satisfy the needs of ‘non-producing’ elites, needs that, between 400 and 650, were restricted at local level in terms of both quantity and space, with the exception of rare and sought-after consumer products for banqueting (spices, sauces, special wines) and liturgical (olive oil, incense) purposes. Before the seventh century, no agricultural produce indigenous to the regions studied here – with the possible exception of wine produced in the most northern zones of the area of production – seems to have circulated beyond the bounds of the relationships that the domination of the peasants by the consuming elites determined.

Analysing demand: the profile of the demanders in the light of the structures and relationships of domination, from the seventh century to the year 1000 Solidly framed within the ambit of royal power under Pepin III and Charlemagne, public demand for the supply of agricultural produce and work did not decline after the collapse of the Carolingian empire. It simply passed into the sphere of the aristocracy and was incorporated into feudal production relationships. The king and the magnates had their own vassals, whose retinues were installed locally at the expense of rural populations in exchange for the provision of armaments and military service, military obligations that also weighed indirectly on the assets of the Church, along with other onuses, such as annual gifts, the missions and logistics of public service, the maintenance of roads, fortifications and bridges, participating in the construction of palaces, etc. Nobody escaped these obligations, free peasants themselves having to join together to ensure that they were met, in accordance with the lists of duties stipulated in the capitularies. These allow us to approach the problematic of wealth in the Frankish secular aristocracy: for first-rank vassals and middle-ranking counts, 200 holdings, which corresponds to an average extent of four to five estate blocks; at the intermediary level, thirty to fifty peasant farms on lease; at the base of the aristocratic pyramid, the person owning ten to twelve holdings, who had to equip mounted men in arms with weapons, on an order of scale found in the twelfth century for the fief de Haubert (Knight’s Fee) . Making use of the Lex Ribuaria (after 633), Patrick Périn has calculated that the total equipment of a fully fitted-out man in arms was worth 36 to 40 shillings – in other words, the price of around twenty cows (Feffer and Périn, 1987: vol. 2, 122). It was necessary to be rich or to be equipped at the expense of the king, the great magnates or the Church to be an armed knight in the Carolingian army. The upkeep of monks and clerics, who were often the brothers and cousins of these men in arms, weighed almost as heavily on countryside inhabitants, as equally it took ten holdings to maintain a monk. The men in arms of Ferrières Abbey described in 840 (Loup de Ferrières, Correspondance, vol. 1, no. 6) were dependent for their expenditure and some of their equipment on the rent paid by the tenants who maintained them. The incessant military campaigns had reduced them to poverty (along with their peasants), 42



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once the income from their benefice had been spent. Other parts of their equipment, such as horses, armour and weapons circulated within the gift-exchange network of abbeys and were indeed often manufactured in monastic workshops (Devroey, 2003: 294–295). Aristocratic status and influence were tied to the elites’ participation in the political, religious and military cycle, in festivities, assemblies and military expeditions, all of which involved a significant transfer of wealth from the countryside. In Pierre Toubert’s phrase, exchange rested on an ‘economy of relationships’ (Bezugswirtschaft) (Toubert, 2004: 216–217). The importance of the demand generated by public transfers can be measured on the basis of the polyptyques that inventoried the estates of the great monasteries of the Carolingian epoch. The transfer of products, services and labour was part of the ‘logistics’ of Carolingian central power – in other words, part of the means and the organizational methods applied to maintain, control and extend the Frankish territory, to ensure good government of the kingdom and meet a specific part of the demand it generated. The aristocrats, for their part, passed on to the peasants the social and military obligations that tied them (directly or indirectly) to royal power. Whether they did this within the normative structures of the large-estate system or through less elaborate forms of extraction was of little importance in terms of demand. For rural people, it meant transfers in four respects: the upkeep of religious ministers, coupled with public aid through the obligatory sacerdotal tithe; the direct fitting-out of a soldier or the material provisioning of the army in terms of cartage, tools, grain, fodder, meat, arms and equipment; a courier service and the heavy transport necessary to convey news and products respectively; and every kind of public work (Devroey, 2006: 570–583, Innes, 2009). Throughout a long hundred years (710–820) of almost continuous wars of aggression, followed by a period (820–880) marked both by civil wars opposing Louis the Pious’ heirs and by the Viking attacks, the most important object of the expenditure covered by the levying of agricultural production – within the framework of the transfer economy controlled by the aristocracy – was war. The wealth derived from war was redistributed by the king between the Church, the magnates, and their own vassals. A fraction of it permeated through to the lower ranks of the aristocratic pyramid and the notables who carried out the functions of mediation and transfer vis-à-vis the peasant societies. In the final analysis, the expense of war weighed either directly on free peasants, afflicted with the burden of personal military service, replacement taxes and fines, or indirectly on tenants (Reuter, 1985; Nelson, 1983; Devroey, 2006: 581–583). In 861, Charles the Bald paid 5 000 pounds (1.2 m ­ illion pennies) to a Viking fleet to wage war to his profit. In terms of the prices fixed by the Frankfurt price index of 794, this sum was the equivalent of the cost of the annual bread consumption (1.2 kg per day) of between 30 000 and 35 000 adult workers! At their level, the aforementioned elites thus demonstrated a real and clear-cut policy in respect of building-up and maintaining land capital. However, the organization of the production and circulation of agricultural goods was not exclusively down to isolated landowners. Measures of a general order were taken by the holders of political power, in order to impose directions for agricultural production and the management of stocks: there were codifications of the systems of charges on Crown’s estates 43

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and the Church, and in barbarian law codes, for instance, we find the existence of a foodstuff price-regulation policy that regulated the choice of cereals and the terms at which they were sold. In a capitulary from the end of 805, Charlemagne ordered that people pray when the empire faced tribulations such as starvation, disease and natural disasters, and that, ‘in this year of famine, each person should help his own people as much as he can and not sell his grain too expensively, and no food is to be sold beyond the empire’ (Capitulary missorum in Theodonis villa datum secundum generale, ch. 4). Similarly, the tithe (including a third of a quarter for the benefit of the poor) became obligatory; the provision of aid to destitute paupers was made the partial responsibility of the powerful in times of famine; and the legality and uniformity of weights and measures was guaranteed. Other measures related to the storing of grain (Verhulst, 1965; Devroey, 2003: 76–77) and were accompanied by the introduction of uniform weights and measures, the exceptional taxation of farms, the adoption of measures concerning currency renewal, and – with the Capitulary de villis – the drawing-up of instructions for the ‘good government’ of royal estates (Devroey, 2003: 76–77; McKitterick, 2008: 237–243). Certain aspects of these measures were circumstantial; those concerning stocks and the maximum price of cereals were repeated by none of Charlemagne’s successors.

2.5 From production location to consumers: estate transfers and the market Consumption of one’s own produce, and large-estate networks The landed property holdings of the religious and secular elites rarely formed a single block, but were scattered and sometimes far from each other, forming a constellation of estates around a centre of secular (palaces, aristocratic residencies) or ecclesiastical (abbey, Episcopal seat) power. The provisioning of secular and ecclesiastical elites and their retinues thus necessitated the adoption of logistical arrangements aimed at resolving the problem of the scattered properties of the large ­landowners. Two, sometimes competing, solutions were adopted: itinerant consumption and the redirecting of agricultural produce to central or intermediate focal points. Itinerant consumption derived from the peripatetic nature of the lives of the elites and their retinues, who journeyed from estate complex (the villa) to estate complex, staying at the centre of each and consuming the estate’s resources until these were partially exhausted, and then moving on. Thus, we can discern the compass of royal progression, within which a network of large farm estates, linked to palaces, ensured the subsistence of an essentially peripatetic monarchy (Liebeschütz, 2000: 28; Brühl, 1968). Sovereignty was exercised through the progress of the king and his retinue from one place to another. The Carolingian empire did not have a fixed capital, but numerous centres of power (urban enclosures, abbey seats, palaces, royal estates, etc.). For the forty-six years of Charlemagne’s reign we know of 234 halts at 110 different places, with a concentration between the Seine and the Weser and another and greater between 44



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the Meuse and the Rhine; we know, too, of around 200 royal villae at the beginning of the ninth century, often situated close to important axes of traffic McKitterick, 2008: 150–151). The royal administration being entrusted to local stewards, administrators worked on a ‘just in case’ basis, each villa in the network of estates having to be ready to accommodate the king and his retinue. The example of the villae of the Annappes region (c. 800) attests to the presence of food stocks of grain and meat, which were equally of use in supplying the royal army during its annual expeditions. The general supplies included provisions for consumption at the great occasional gatherings (the general court council), carts, arms and campaign equipment, three months’ worth of food supplies and clothing for half a year (Devroey, 2003: 125). Peregrination was thus one of the responses of the secular elites to the dispersion of the resources in landed property made available to them. However, it was not an option for the monastic world, whose undertaking to live separately from the world could not accommodate an itinerant way of life. The religious elites thus drew up their own logistical scheme, which combined the transfer of surplus agricultural produce to the monastery centre, to be consumed or sold, with – for the most distant estates – concentration in urban centres for sale. Thus, considerable quantities of cereals were transported long distances within the hubbed networks: the circulation areas of the large Carolingian monasteries focused the surplus on a small number of nodal points, which served as staging-estates for the carts; on priories, which managed the spiritual and material affairs of local properties; urban refuges; and in fine the monastery, the centre of centres, which sheltered a sedentary population of monks and domestics that could exceed a thousand people. These central sites were equipped with storage facilities and often, too, a trading infrastructure, such as a market (Devroey, 2003). The possibility of having cereals transported from afar to the monastery or, on the other hand, of selling agricultural products originating from ‘outlying’ farms was the object of economic calculation on the part of the community’s administrators, who chose the optimal solution, based on the advantages and disadvantages of each option. Thus, in his Statutes (822), abbot Adalard of Corbie recommended the monks to calculate transport costs, a calculation that established that it was more profitable to sell the products from estates more than thirty km distant from the seat of the abbey. Land or water routes were preferred, depended on to the types of good transported (cereals, wine, black millstones from the Eifel area, artisanal goods). The waterways constituted the framework of the areas of estate-based circulation of the great ecclesiastical institutions, such as Prüm, Saint-Germain-des-Prés or Saint-Martin-de-Tours, complementing the peasants’ transportation boon work, which constituted a seigniorial response to the difficulty and increased costs of land-based transport (Claude, 1985: 15 ff.). Boats permitted much larger quantities of commodities to be transported (up to 12 tons by river, 10 to 30 tons by sea) than did land-based convoys, which consisted of trains of several wagons or even simple convoys of donkeys or other beasts of burden, utilized over short distances to haul grain, wine and salt, in the first instance, and luxury commodities, grain and salt in the second (McCormick, 2001). The type of land-based wealth also had repercussions on the modes of transport: in the absence of 45

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a fixed central point, the economy of a large, secular, landed property or of that of a minister of Charlemagne such as Eginhard involved mechanisms of distribution and exchange within the nebulae of properties at distances of several hundred kilometres: those mechanisms included gift and obligation networks, or the sale of surpluses and the buying of rare resources on the market (Innes, 2009: 50–51). Certain axial river routes were heavily used: the main one for the areas considered here was incontestably the Rhine and its tributaries, a major route which linked domestic landed-estate networks and certain platforms of international trade, as in the case of the Main, the Danube, the Mosel, the Loire, the Seine and maybe the Meuse. The largest ecclesiastical establishments owned their own ships, which, where most numerous, even formed little ‘fleets’ of around a dozen vessels ( Johanek, 1987: 49). The upkeep of the transport network was the responsibility of the public authority (and in the first place the king), which in return collected certain tolls, notably for the use of ports. Ecclesiastical establishments nonetheless benefited from an exemption to these tolls when it came to surplus goods or those they transported for domestic use, and even those they bought and sold at trading sites.

The rural economy and the market The methods whereby agricultural goods circulated were woven into an economy that accorded a large place to the consumption of one’s own produce or to the delivery of ‘services.’ It is nevertheless very clear that, in the case of the elites, not all agricultural produce was destined for consumption, but that they sold a certain surplus of it, notably to raise cash to buy the prestigious goods they were so fond of, or quite simply to buy goods not produced within the context of the landed estate. Monasteries, the Crown and markets Exchanges between the domestic sphere (the estates and the abbeys) and the external world were in fact carried out through the expedient of buying: the monasteries’ statutes, which regulated the ways in which the monks were supplied, are very eloquent in this respect. In 829, at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the monks drew all their everyday comestibles from abbey lands: cereals, wine, vegetables (and garden herbs), cheese, butter, lard, honey and wax, salt, poultry and eggs. Everything else had to be bought. To cover the needs of the wardrobe (clothes, shoes and other leather objects) and other monastic offices, as well as all ‘the other necessities’ determined by monastic rule (fish, spices, products for the scriptorium and for lighting – colourings and oil, for instance –, pitch for the wine barrels, etc.), the abbot listed the names of seven estates whose revenues, once converted into cash, would cover the expenditure. The fabric of exchange is reflected in the following. The large ecclesiastical landowners of the Paris basin sold cereals (in 829, there were weighing places at the monastery and at a nearby bridge, on the Seine!) and wine in abundance (Doehaerd, 1947), and even other agricultural produce. The cloth and linen supplied by the estate workshops or by way of fee payments from the holdings do not seem to have been used for the monks’ habits, for which recourse appears to have been had to fabrics 46



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from other regions, such as the coasts of the Channel and the North Sea or Frisia. During the winter of 840–841, the abbot of Ferrières, Servat Loup, had sold ‘a not inconsiderable quantity of wine and flour (…), and a little salt found at Orleans and small neighbouring estates’, in order to provide subsidies for clothing and money in reserve for military expeditions. In 859, he postponed a purchase of iron, it being difficult to carry this out ‘because of the harvest’. What could not be produced locally or bought was thus obtained through donation or bartering with more favoured regions, as the correspondence of Loup de Ferrières also shows. This abbey owned (as did several others) a priory close to Quentovic, the gateway to the Channel and England. Its loss would deprive the monks of Ferrières of habits, cheese and fish (Devroey, 1993). These examples show how the large estate worked within the exchange economy to cover as many of its internal needs as possible and to achieve the required degree of comfort (necessaria) through the sale of surplus produce (cereals, wine) to raise the means to acquire what it needed from external sources. In the same way, the wealthiest secular landlords, and certainly the king, took an active part in trade, as testified to by, for example, the compilation of the Praeceptum Negociatorum (828) on the orders of Louis the Pious, which bears witness to the sale of a portion of the surplus of treasury lands by merchants who, furthermore, paid the royal treasury a tax for their free movement (Ganshof, 1957). Another example, perhaps even more striking, is that of Eginhard, who is said to have tried to create a fair at Seligenstadt to sell the surplus produce from his own estates (McCormick, 2001: 655). The secular elites were thus also players in the trading of agricultural products, alongside the monasteries mentioned above. To carry out these trading transactions, the monasteries and the elites needed commercial agents, principal among whom were either servants given responsibility for missions (nuncii, missi), or maybe – as at Saint-Germain-des-Prés – dependent merchants of ambiguous status (the aforementioned negociatores), who benefited from trading privileges and the special protection of the abbey or from the Crown in selling surpluses and buying exteriora ( Johanek, 1987). Side by side with these seigniorial agents existed purely commercial professionals (mercatores), who operated independently and paid telonea (tollage) and taxes on merchandise. They could certainly transport artisanal goods, be they necessary or luxury items, but also played a role in the transportation of cereals. Little known, because socially they were not held in any real esteem, their activities being discredited by Christian ideology (McCormick, 2001), these professionals were very numerous; indeed, there were certain identifiable groups of them already in the sixth century, including Syrian, Jewish (Devroey, 1995) and Frisia merchants (Lebecq, 1983), who were established in the largest towns of the Carolingian kingdom (around the Rhine in particular) and who collected the surpluses sold at urban markets or international fairs and sent them on to the international export centres, the emporia.

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The peasantry and the market The commercial exchanges detailed above stemmed essentially from the selling of the elites’ surplus produce within the framework of regional markets that perhaps fed international markets. But we should not underestimate those circuits, less prominently mentioned in the written sources, in which the peasantry was directly involved. Exchanges took place chiefly at local level, at the local markets set up in the countryside. As Chris Wickham reminds us (2005: 697), even in a homogenous agrarian environment, not every peasant had identical access to every product, and embryonic specialization could exist at local level, depending on the nature of the soil, for example. There is no doubt that exchanges allowed various individuals to sell certain surplus products and to obtain agricultural or artisanal goods. This statement is based on those few texts that mention such exchanges, unfortunately a lot less numerous than those that mention transactions at urban locations or at border sites such as the emporia. Dopsch (1921–1922, vol. 2) has pointed out that in 829 a council (Paris) reiterated the freedom of peasants to sell their surplus in cereals and wine, provided they had discharged the various rights to which their lands were subject. Unfortunately, it is not easy to delineate the framework of these peasant exchanges. Were they prescribed by the rural markets integrated into the networks of the large estate? The conditions for selling the fruits of peasant labour (agricultural and artisanal products) were probably less restrictive there than at the more significant markets – controlled by public officers and subject to taxes (tolls) – at least when the transactions involved modest sums (per deneratas, ‘for pennies’, Verhulst, 2002 and below). The dues in cash paid by tenants and the anecdotes recounted in the lives of the saints (Despy, 1968) attest to the involvement of peasants in quickening this local economy through the sale of artisanal goods or raw materials (linen or clothing, pottery, ironwork and agricultural produce). Peasants close to central sites were drawn into the exchange activity generated by the large annual fairs, such as that of Saint-Denis, in the Paris region, during which foreign merchants travelled through the villages to purchase wine and probably sell other merchandise (Bruand, 2002: 144–146; see below). In the case of peasants close to the Fleury-sur-Loire abbey, it was a weekly market that attracted them (Claude, 1985). The towns consumed all kinds of countryside produce, including the wood for construction purposes, transported to Paris by the tenants of a Saint-Germain-desPrés estate (Saint-Germain Polyptyque, xiii, 1). The effects that this integration of peasants into the exchange economy could have had are almost impossible to measure. Did peasants perhaps deliberately gear certain aspects of their production towards the requirements of the market, or towards the possibilities, even modest, of trading on a local scale? It was stated earlier that pig rearing at least could have been aimed at this, apart from meeting the requirements of the master! It has been established in the last decade that, in Denmark, many small ‘beach markets’ existed, which must be understood within the context of local trade and exchange. Examination of these settlements along the Danish coasts has revealed small dwellings, workshops and finds of silver coins and weights. The settlements date from the sixth to the eleventh centuries and must have been the ports from which local people, both high-ranking and more humble, carried out their trading. Some of these 48



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Illustration 2.4  The payment of dues, c. ­820–830, as depicted in the ­Stuttgarter Psalter, Saint-Germain-des-Prés

sites were associated with specialized production: situated at the lower end of the fjord at Knudshoved Odde, Næs, for instance, was home to a large-scale flax-producing operation; at Löddeköpinge, on the west coast of Skåne, textiles were produced on a considerable scale in the tenth and eleventh centuries5.

2.6  The trading sites: towns and emporia Rural markets, urban markets The impact of ‘urban’ centres varied according to geographical area, and it was essentially in the Rhineland zone that the town played an essential role; more to the south, though, exchanges of some scale took place within a rural framework, close to an abbey. It was towards the central sites that the large ecclesiastical institutions (and doubtless the secular great and good) directed the production surplus that they traded. That surplus perhaps served as a source of raw materials for a population of artisans that lived alongside the urban elites, less numerous than in the Roman era. The markets were theoretically under the tight control of the king, who guaranteed the use of legal weights and currency and taxed each transaction (Adam, 1996). However, several ‘illegitimate’ markets were created by the lower ranks of power, leading to a profusion of sites of 5

These reflections on Denmark were suggested to us by Prof. BjØrn Poulsen, as we were unable to read the relevant writings in Danish.

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exchange, modest or more spectacular in scale that served as points of attraction and redistribution for exchange at local and regional level. In parallel with the great ports of trade, which were directly linked to the circuits of maritime exchange, extra-urban fairs (such as the large Saint-Denis wine fair) and town fairs (such as that at Mainz on the Rhine) took on an international dimension for merchandise such as cereals, salt and wine (Devroey, 1993a; Claude, 1985; Johanek, 1985; McCormick, 2002). From the mideighth century, the Saint-Denis fair, with its immediate proximity to Paris, was visited by foreign traders – Anglo Saxons, then Frisians – and fed the international wine trade, which was directed towards England in particular (Hamwic, Hodges, 1977). It seems that, over the course of the centuries, the fair increased its international attractiveness: a century later, Jewish merchants are found there, whose ‘network stretched as far as Iraq’ (as shown by a ninth-century Hebrew text); at the beginning of the tenth century, merchants from Lombardy, Spain and Provence were pouring into the market. All the while, the nature of the goods exchanged there never stopped diversifying, wine being joined by such items as honey and dyestuffs (McCormick, 2001). Side by side with this market was a more traditional, weekly market, which served to ensure the continuous sale of agricultural and artisanal surpluses and which doubtless formed the base onto which the international fair was grafted. Carolingian testimonies concerning an inter-regional trade in grain raise the question of the relationship between the large landed properties and the phenomena of urbanization. The link is far from being an automatic one: the great abbeys founded in the seventh and eighth centuries in the countryside were at the same time ‘monastic towns’, with considerable populations and a range of artisanal activities, self-contained spaces built to realize the monastic ideals of self-sufficiency and isolation from the world. The centre of a large estate network could turn out to be attractive to the point of becoming a nucleus of urbanization, or it could act to repel, in order to meet the ideals of retreat from the world. At Prüm, Lorsch or Fulda in the ninth century, the infrastructure – markets or river ports, for instance – necessary to supply the monks were situated some distance from the monastery. To find different configurations, it is necessary to turn to peri-urban establishments such as Arras, where the Saint-Vaast abbey gave birth to a small agglomeration of textile artisans and merchants, before becoming the principal point of urbanization after its fortification against the Vikings in 883–887 (Verhulst, 1999: 53–54). If it is incontestable, as Despy (1968) stresses, that the flowering of the large-estate economy and the growth of rural markets were not without effect on the budding of urban centres, the immediate proximity of monasteries (or royal palaces) was not enough to bring about urbanization (as is declared too systematically by Verhulst, 2002; Devroey and Montanari, 2009). Rather, it seems that urban growth, or its absence, is explained by the conjunction of a series of factors: geographical position, mainly at the intersections of water and land routes, the presence – sometime since Antiquity – of powerful consumers (counts and other secular aristocrats, prelates, ecclesiastical institutions) able to call on surpluses from their own estates, and the existence of dependent or semi-dependent craftsmen who not only had an active influence on the economy, but were also consumers. Urban centres also attracted by reason of the security they offered and by the permanence of those institutions that were able to maintain their influence 50



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on the long run and to organize, even partially, the supply of agricultural goods for the urban population. Despite what Henri Pirenne suggested, trade was probably not the ultima ratio behind urban growth. Nevertheless, proto-urban centres were from the beginning places of exchange, where powerful ecclesiastics or lay people could control and organize an ‘institutional’ market and redistribute products among their dependants; gradually, other actors became involved in urban trade in parallel circuits, and the urban centre’s attraction for the surrounding population became ever more pronounced and provided the basis for the emergence of a secondary sector. Finally, as emphasised by Bas Van Bavel (2010), a rich hinterland is of itself not sufficient to explain urban growth – very spectacular much later, even in areas lacking rich soils. However, it can be assumed that urban growth started earlier in rich, booming agricultural areas, developing more sharply later in other areas where institutional coercion drew agrarian resources from the countryside and remote markets, being able in the process to rely on an improved network of communications. Urban growth is thus a rather complex phenomenon in which many factors come into play. Thus, not all landed-estate centres, notably monastic, gave birth to towns, although the link between the intensification of exchanges and the landed-estate system is irrefutable. One of the strongest indications of this is the distribution of ceramics: according to McCormick (2002) and Wickham (2005 and 2008), ceramics have a distribution interdependent with that of the large estate, spreading notably within the large-estate circuits of exchange. The landed-estate model was progressively applied to the territories conquered by the Carolingians and went hand in hand with the extension of the area of diffusion of certain types of ceramic, which in itself attests to the intensification of exchanges. In Scandinavia, there was no impact of urbanization on the inland territories, except in one case. It has been established by Herbert Jahnkuhn and more firmly by Ralf Wiechmann that the close rural hinterland of Hedeby constituted a circulation zone for the coins minted in that town, which circulated at face value. It seems that this situation may hint at a mode of circulation and a type of local trade that seem more ‘European’ than are usually encountered in the North (Wiechmann, 1996).

The nature of the goods exchanged Historiography has focused on the goods that have left the greater traces in written and archaeological sources: luxury or everyday objects, which leave an archaeological trace; containers such as ceramics; rare products or products of great cultural value, such as salt and wine. The circulation of other merchandise originating in the countryside, such as cereals or textile materials, only rarely leaves a tangible trace. It is nonetheless evident that raw materials circulated in quantity and on an international scale, with a dynamic orientated around the rivers, in particularly in the Rhineland area. Mainz drew off rural surplus from Franconia (cereals, but also wine, notably from Alsace and the Worms region), as did Strasbourg from Alsace. During a period when costs of living were high (Verhulst, 2002: 100), the elevated price of grain on the Mainz market was well-known to the monks of Fulda (150 km distant). The Mainz merchants were in the habit of going up the River Main to Seligenstadt (a central site founded 51

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by Eginhard) to buy cereals from upstream. The port was also regularly frequented by merchant boats from Cologne. One of the town’s two ports was situated close to floating mills clinging to the piers of the old Roman bridge in a neighbourhood named ‘To the granaries’ where there were also artisanal factories. It is once more in this Rhineland area that an example of speculation on the price of cereals has been attested to, i.e. that of an ill-intentioned bishop hoarding surplus grain to sell at a high price during bad years (Sabbe, 1934; McCormick, 2002, citing Notker of Sankt-Gall). On the basis of this study, we can permit ourselves some generalizations concerning the trading of cereals via the Rhine to the North Sea and the Baltic; indeed, excavations at Hamburg have revealed a cargo of grain dating from the ninth or tenth century ( Jankuhn, 1986). During the famine of 805, Charlemagne banned speculation on and the sale of grain beyond the frontiers. Ermold the Black explicitly talks of Rhineland grain being sold on the North Sea (Ermoldus Niger, Ad Pippinum Regem, I, 107–109, p. 210). Such medieval abbeys as Prüm or Lorsch, and particularly those located in the Rhine valley, thus owned a number of pied-à-terre close to commercial locations on the Rhine or the Mosel, or to the littoral, near Quentovic, for example ( Johanek, 1987; Lebecq, 2000). Subsequently, there was a concentration of such products as cereals, wood and wine – which circulated in the landed-estate exchange networks – at Mainz and similar agglomerations. From there, they were without doubt taken via the Rhine to the emporia of the North Sea, in the first place to Dorestad, where archaeological excavations bear witness to the use of imported wood for the construction of quays and the framework of wells, built from the staves of wine barrels. Cereals, meat-based products, honey and wine were far from constituting the only goods exchanged on the urban and international markets; fish, too, was exchanged, at least regionally and – thanks to the use of salting and pickling – even internationally.

International exchange, on the edges of the Carolingian world  On the basis of all the above, we can thus offer a simplifying, but useful, typology distinguishing: 1) the sites of exchange located in the immediate vicinity of centres of production, the villae, or in certain cases the monastic centres, and which both played an essential role in linking the producers among them and were used for the periodic (weekly, for the most part) sale of everyday goods; 2) the annual, international fairs, often held at a rural location, which served as places both for the supply of specific products (wine and salt, for example) and for trade professionals to muster at; 3) urban markets, which acted as both supply site for an urban clientele and site for the concentration of the agricultural surplus that fed certain international circuits, whereby agricultural goods passed through the urban centres to become incorporated into larger networks. The impact of geography on exchanges It is crucial to note to what extent the structural linkage of all these places, together with their hierarchization, was in fact intimately tied to geography: the environment and the physical features of an area are decisive factors in understanding the physiognomy of 52



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inter-regional exchanges from the seventh century on. The main exchange flows used the sea and the great rivers of the north European plain: the Rhine, the Meuse and the Scheldt, which came together in the Frisia delta; the Seine and the Loire, emptying into the maritime lanes leading to Ireland, England and Scandinavia. An appreciation of the importance of these sea and inland waterway routes is necessary to an understanding of the establishment and prosperity of the northern vineyards that supplied the consumers of the North. The Rhineland, the Mosel, Alsace and the Paris basin took part in long-distance exchanges, whereas, until the twelfth century, distribution in enclaves such as the Reims territory was just local (Matheus, 2007; Devroey, 1989). The regions best served by river routes experienced early specialization regarding agricultural activities in the viticulture sector, side by side with livestock breeding in wet valley bottoms. The example of the Paris basin shows that, where a part of production was channelled to the account of large landowners for their private consumption, they and the wine-growing peasants had a considerable surplus at their disposal; this was sent in lavish quantities to the market and was bought up by professional merchants (see above). Direct producers had the opportunity to convert their surplus or their labour into money, which no doubt explains the setting-up of rural markets. The zones where this occurred constituted islets of prosperity and commercial activity (and equally of intense monetary activity); it is also probable that they maintained close relationships of exchange with their neighbours, notably to be able to obtain cereals (Devroey, 2007). Coastal markets – with their specialized products (textiles, fish, salt, etc.) and enjoying a privileged position in terms of transport – also maintained regular exchange contacts with inland areas in order to obtain surplus agricultural produce. The rye found at Feddersen Wierde (Lower Saxony), for example, could not have been grown locally. At Dahlem (Lower Saxony), during the Carolingian era, the storage capacity for cereals widely exceeded the needs of the local community. ‘This, together with the evidence that several buildings were used for cloth production, and the settlement’s location on a main waterway leading to the coastal marsh settlements, suggests a community engaged in trading grain and cloth with these regions and perhaps beyond’ (Hamerow, 2002: 137). A preferred target of the Crown, which levied tolls and maintained large mints there, the coastal regions of the Channel and the North Sea (as zones of exchange and where the main emporia were set up) constituted areas of production for rare and sought after supplies (cattle, sheep, fish, dairy products, salt, etc.) and attractive zones for the ‘bulk goods’ produced inland (wine, cereals, pottery, etc.). Verhulst has raised the question of how the large population of Dorestad was fed, because of the town’s not very favourable hinterland: grain from the Rhine, besides being equally destined for export, must have served this end. These indicators are the sign of a growing specialization in certain north-European regions (England, Flanders), with a certain level of intensity that sparked off and maintained long-distance exchange networks, all the while ensuring outlets for specific products such as wine, and also for more generic products such as cereals (Loveluck and Tys, 2006). They enable an understanding of why cereals, which were produced in surplus quantities within the estate economy, were mentioned alongside wine as emblematic of the merchandise circulating on the Rhine (see above). Thus it seems 53

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that coastal zones or zones irrigated by important waterways, the Rhine being the prime example, were also those that intensified their production and turned outwards. From urban Rhineland centres to the emporia? The appearance of places of trade and artisanship (called wics or emporia) on the shores of the Channel and the North Sea from the seventh century on and their extension northwards in the ninth and tenth centuries as far as the Baltic, strengthens this observation. These places served as trading forums for the Carolingian world and the Scandinavian and British tribes that to a large extent vitalized trade by sea; they have been interpreted as being ‘ports of trade’ or as ‘gateway communities’ controlling the distribution of luxury goods, surplus produce and products manufactured for kings and regional leaders (Hodges, 1982). They were numerous in the area considered, and originated for the most part in the seventh century, experiencing a certain growth in the eighth and even the ninth (see Hodges, 1982 and 2000; Scull, 1997). Remarkable among them were Quentovic, at the mouth of the Canche, close to Boulogne-sur-Mer, which was located only some fifteen years ago, and Dorestad, not far from Utrecht, which was the end point for Rhineland traffic. Without a shadow of doubt, the latter site experienced exceptional expansion between its beginnings at the end of the seventh century and its apogee, dated to have been from the beginning of the ninth century to 840, as witnessed by the continual expansion of its built environment and its population. Domburg on the Walcheren peninsula must also be cited , as must be a constellation of emporia on the English coast (London, Ipswich, York and Hamwic, which was close to Southampton and under the protection of the king of Wessex, and was closely tied to Dorestad, as is shown by the distribution of ceramics – for the distribution of these, see Blackmore, 2001) and at Medemblik (in the north of Holland), Hedeby (Haithabu, close to Schleswig, on the Danish-German border), Ribe and Birka (close to Stockholm, the east side of Sweden). The emporia are known above all from their interrelationships. We understand relatively well the circuits of circulation of certain goods from one trading site to another. For example, certain types of ceramic, and maybe also blackstones for millstones or for construction purposes, crossed the Channel from Quentovic to Hamwic. On the other hand, the relationships the emporia engaged in with inland territories are problematic (Innes, 2009): recent archaeological research carried out on central sites and their hinterlands has shown the importance of exchange relationships at a local level and the place occupied in the commercial flow by commodities of every kind: cereals, wine, textile products, wood, millstones and ceramics (Moreland, 2000; Loveluck, 2001; Loveluck and Tys, 2006: 140–143). Maps of the distribution of these products and the discovery of numerous coins in the countryside (in England, thanks to favourable legislation concerning the use of metal detectors) show that these emporia were not simply transit sites, but also centres that sometimes exchanged with their rural hinterland. This statement nonetheless requires a general qualification, in that the emporia situated within the immediate zone of Frankish influence (Quentovic and Dorestad) experienced better economic integration into their hinterlands, whereas Hamwic or Ribe had a more insular development, though this was also as a result of 54



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natural conditions and different policies (Wickham, 2005). In fact the distribution of ceramics, in particular with origins in Ipswich, has allowed Chris Wickham (2005, 809–814) to identify the waves of exchange growth and intensification in England: in the seventh century, Kent appeared as the only import zone – above all under royal control, but without the market relationships having percolated through to the inland territories; from 720, the incontestable increase in exchange with the hinterland, beyond circuits exclusively controlled by the holders of public power, is obvious in East Anglia, and even more generally in eastern England (Kent excepted) – thus from the Tyne to as far as the Thames. This phenomenon is linked to the assertiveness of the aristocratic hierarchies who increased their pressure on the peasantry (see above). The presence, or absence, of emporia on the Frankish or English coasts thus does not allow us to claim the existence of a real circulation of agricultural and artisanal goods in the inland territories; the phenomenon has to be linked to a more general characterization of rural farming structures and the relationships between the aristocracy and the peasantry. However, some authors are more positive about the integration of these emporia within the surrounding countryside, while acknowledging that its precise detailing is very difficult, due to the ambiguous nature of the archeological artefacts (Hamerow, 2007). Recent archaeological digs have in addition permitted a revaluation of the housing density of these commercial sites, showing that these had significant population numbers. After 850, and preceding the Viking attacks, the Frisia and Anglo-Saxon emporia underwent a rapid decline that was less a question of them disappearing than of a shifting of activity. In effect, the commercial and artisanal functions of these ancient emporia were transferred to new central sites (Dorestad to Tiel, Lundenwic to London, Hamwic to Southampton, etc.) and were spread throughout often fortified secondary agglomerations (of which there are English and Flemish examples). During the same epoch, Charles the Bald stipulated in the Pîtres Edict (864) that each pagus (district or county) be endowed with a market; in Germany the setting-up of markets linked to a toll and a mint increased.

2.7 Money Whoever talks about trade cannot fail to mention the place of money as a medium favouring – or not, as the case may be – exchange. The presence of money in this economic system continues to pose problems for historians and archaeologists (Rovelli, 2009). ‘Coins were (…) in this period somewhat clumsy aids to exchange; they were standards of value for bargainers, and they were convenient ways of hoarding wealth, but they were not as yet the metonyms for commercial activity that they would later become’ (Wickham, 2009: 227). In the western Roman provinces, the end of the Empire translated into an unprecedented fall in and simplification of monetary activity. Medieval society nonetheless retained coins as a standard of value (with the exception of Ireland, which used cows). During the Merovingian period, monetary activity was characterized by a highly 55

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decentralized coinage, based on the golden triens (one third of a solidus) mixed with a growing quantity of silver. This coin, whose value was pretty high (around 70 euros, according to Wickham, 2009: 227), circulated principally amongst the elites within the context of relationships of political patronage and gift-exchange between the kings and the Church, and of tributes and taxes, and amongst merchants. The rapid debasement of the Merovingian triens from around 630–640 and the coin’s complete replacement by silver coinage between 660 and 670, together with the parallel minting of silver coins in England and Frisia bear witness to the increase in monetary activity and the circulation of coins of average value, better adapted to an enlarged circulation in the places of trade and artisanship, and in the countryside. The introduction of the Carolingian penny from 760 onwards marks a return to the regulation of money by the Crown, with guaranteed hallmarks, weights and standard value, and a centralized production of several million coins per year. The penny (1.7g of silver at 95 per cent content) was a coin of medium value, a lot lighter than the Arab dirhem (2.9g, with minting equally in gold and copper) or the smaller currency unit in Scandinavia (1 ertog = 8g), where the precious metal circulated and was hoarded above all in rings, in jewellery, in ingots or in fragmented metal. The ‘conversion’ of the penny into euros (around 17 euros, according to Wickham) is perhaps less suggestive than the comparison drawn from the Frankfurt price index of 794: with a penny (denariata, French denrée), 30 pounds of rye bread could be bought (around 12 kg); in other words, the ration of an adult male for 10 days. A peasant could use the penny to pay a part of his seigniorial fees or his contribution to the army tax (ost) or the tribute to the Vikings, to buy tools and animals or sell his surplus produce. Pennies and obols (half pennies) were also distributed to paupers at the doors of monasteries. On the basis of data found in the polyptyques, the monetary burden could reach or even exceed 16 pennies per lease-holding at the heart of certain landed-estate networks in the Paris basin (SaintGermain-des-Prés) and the Rhineland (Prüm), or could be as little as a few small coins a year, for the servile lease-holdings of Saint-Germain-des-Prés (2 pennies) or in regions less firmly integrated into the large landed-estate networks, such as Flanders (Devroey, 1986b: 485–486). The actual purchases of daily life required the use of credit systems covering terms of a week or longer, such as Europe knew until the twentieth century. Did Carolingian money circulate through, as it were, capillary action within society as a whole, in the towns and in the countryside, or was it channelled through preferential networks, such as the army or the networks of royal patronage? Certain indications support the first view, albeit that there was substantial regional disparity (few isolated money finds in Germany and in Italy, for example): 80 per cent of coins circulated locally within a radius of 60 to 100 km around the point of issue. A genuine quantification of Carolingian minting is still difficult to carry out for the eighth and ninth centuries. Throughout this period, the circulation of money within Frankish territory was very homogenous, as the royal officers efficiently imposed the ­reminting of foreign coin. Monetary activity during the period of Carolingian ­prosperity (with pennies of greater weight and fineness) absorbed the monetary ­surplus of the balance of exchanges, which explains the plentiful mintings at Dorestad, the main port of exchange with non-Frankish western and northern Europe. Its mint is said to have 56



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struck 4.5 million pennies6 during the boom period of 820–840. But what does this figure (the equivalent of only 200 kg of silver each year) mean? For the same period, Coupland gives the figure of 3.2 million pennies for the Treves mint on the Rhine (Coupland, 2007: passim). A purely quantitative comparison has hardly any meaning, as it is very clear that a large proportion of the commercial transactions conducted at Dorestad used money only as a standard of value within the context of direct exchange between merchants, whereas, at Treves, the archbishop and the local elites were involved in a multitude of monetary relationships within the framework of royal and feudal networks and of the rural seigneury.

Conclusion Between 500 and 1000, the area considered in the present chapter could be crudely divided into several blocks, in terms of the orientation of their production towards the ‘market’. It was a period marked by the pre-eminence of the peasant mode of production, in which the elites played a loose role, and in which production was without doubt predominantly aimed at satisfying the needs of peasant households themselves, even if tribute levies could weigh on these blocks of territory, which can be identified as a part of Frisia of Germany before the Pippinid ascent to power; England before her evolution towards a more constraining form of domination of the peasantry and the importing of Frankish models; and the Nordic countries. Conversely, the ‘Frankish’ territories, those between the Loire and the Rhine, then the zone to the east of the Rhine, were marked by a large proportion of the productive forces being integrated within considerable complexes geared towards the provisioning of the secular and ecclesiastical elites, the big Carolingian estates. There is no doubt that these structures permitted the maintenance of rich elites who traded at least a part of the agricultural surplus, doing so at regional or even inter-regional sites of exchange, as well as externally, notably in the Nordic areas. What they realized on the sale of agricultural goods (cereals, wine, salt, etc.) also allowed them to stock up on rare or luxury goods. It was in this way that privileged areas of circulation and exchange (Rhenish, Parisian) took shape, where turning to the market in effect supplemented the domestic logic of ‘covering needs’. Through what it permitted and what it demanded, seigniorial domination also drew the peasantry towards the markets. During the period under review, this ‘Frankish’ territory was very certainly the area with the most intense circulation of agricultural production, on account of the wealth of the elites and the pressure they exerted on the peasantry, even though, equally, we should not exclude the fact that the distribution of the written sources and historiography influence our perception of agricultural and economic realities. In the Frankish area, the demands of the elites weighed quantitatively and qualitatively on the countryside, less perhaps in increasing the direct material transfers within the context of the ‘seigneurie’ (the delivery of cereals, wine and animals) than in increasing the transfers of labour, specialized or 6

On the basis of production of 10 000 coins per stamp.

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otherwise, to the benefit of the demesne. The overall increase in the production of grain and wine and the like in the Carolingian epoch, and which fed inter-regional exchange, is perhaps to be found mainly in this process. The collapse of Carolingian political structures, from the second half of the ninth century on led to part of the land-based wealth held by the large abbeys and the Crown being redistributed (through secularisation, encroachment) among magnates whose power was more local (counts, minor lords); rural landed-property assets were less sprawling, but the aristocratic domination of the nearby peasantry doubtless grew during the tenth (the poorly known ‘century of iron’) and the eleventh centuries. It is not impossible that this intensification of pressure was one of the conditions of ‘the countryside boom’, more tightly controlled and exploited than previously, which could have been partially instrumental in the growth of urban centres around the year 1000. These centres, ever more numerous and diverse in size, served as proximate places of exchange and as sites of privileged exchange for these new elites with less scope to act and more localized influence than the great aristocrats and elites of Carolingian times. Previously, the logistic and economic jurisdictions of these elevated elites were more wide-flung; moreover, the elites had at their disposal nodal points of sale and distribution that, although less numerous, were made accessible by complex logistics fitted to the task. Consequently, the localization of the frameworks of political life, accompanied by an intensification of aristocratic pressure, could have furthered agricultural growth and the multiplying of urban centres, and intensified market circulation.

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Noddle, B. A. (1975) ‘Animal bones from 8 medieval sites in Southern Britain’, in A.T. Clason (ed.), Archaeozoological Studies, Amsterdam, 1975, pp. 248–260. Noizet, H. (2002) ‘Le centre canonial de Saint-Martin de Tours et ses domaines périphériques en Val de Loire (ixe–xe siècles)’, Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest, 109, pp. 9–32. Ouzoulias, P. (2006) L’économie agraire de la Gaule: aperçus historiographiques et ­ perspectives archéologiques, PhD in Archeology, Université de Franche-Comté, Besançon, 2 vol. Parkhouse, J. (1997) ‘The distribution and exchange of Mayen lava quernstones in Early Medieval Northwestern Europe’, in G. De Boe and F. Verhaeghe (eds), Exchange and trade in medieval Europe, Brugge, pp. 97–106 Périn, P. and Feffer, L. (1987) Les Francs, 2 vol., Paris. Pirenne, H. (1937) Mahomet et Charlemagne, Paris. I placiti del ‘Regnum Italiae’, ed. Manaresi, C. (1955), Rome. Le polyptyque de l’abbaye de Saint-Bertin (844–859). Édition critique et commentaire, F.-L. Ganshof (ed.) (1975), Paris. Rahtz, P. (1979) The Saxon and Medieval palaces at Cheddar, excavations 1960–1962, BAR British Series, 65, Oxford. Rahtz, P. and Meeson, R. (1992) An Anglo-Saxon watermill at Tamworth, London. Rectitudines singularum personarum, Liebermann, F. (ed.). (1903), Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, vol. 1: Text und Übersetzung, Halle, pp. 444–453. Reuter, T. (1985) ‘Plunder and tribute in the carolingian Empire’, in Transactions of the Royal Society, 5 ser., 35, pp. 75–94. Robertson, A. J. (1939) Anglo-Saxon Charters, Cambridge, 1939. Rösener, W. (ed.) (1989) Strukturen der Grundherrschaft im frühen Mittelalter, Göttingen. Rovelli, A. (2009) ‘Coins and trade in Early Medieval Europe’, Early Medieval Europe, 17, 1, pp. 45–76. Sabbe, E. (1934) ‘Quelques types de marchands des IXe et XIe s.’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, vol. 13, pp. 176–187. Sarris, P. (2009) ‘Introduction’, in P. Sarris and J. Banaji (eds), Aristocracies, peasantries and the framing of the Early Middle Ages, Journal of Agrarian Change, 9, 1, special issue. Saunders, T. (2001) ‘Early Medieval emporia and the tributary social function’, in D. Hill and R. Cowie (eds), Wics. The Early Mediaeval trading centres of northern Europe, Sheffield, pp. 7–13. Schlesinger, W. (1979) ‘Die Hufe im Frankenreich’, in H. Beck et al. (eds), Untersuchungen zur eisenzeitlichen und frühmittelalterlichen Flur im Mitteleuropa und ihrer Nutzung, Göttingen, pp. 40–70. Scull, C. (1997) ‘Urban centres in pre-viking England’, in J. Hines (ed.), The Anglo-Saxons from the migration period to the eighth century, Woodbridge, pp. 269–310. Toubert, P. (1990) ‘La part du grand domaine dans le décollage économique de l’Occident’, in La croissance agricole du Haut Moyen Age. Chronologie, modalités, géographie, Auch, pp. 53–86. Toubert, P. (2004) L’Europe dans sa première croissance, Paris.

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Tran, N. (2007) ‘Écrire l’histoire des économies antiques: la controverse entre «modernisme» et «primitivisme», et son dépassement’, in P. Brulé, Fr. Prost and J. Oulhen (eds), Économies et sociétés en Grèce ancienne, Rennes, pp. 13–28. Verhaeghe, F., Loveluck, C. and Story, J. (2005) ‘Urban developments in the age of Charlemagne’, in J. Story (ed.), Charlemagne, empire and society, pp. 259–287. Verhulst, A. and Semmler, J. (1962) ‘Les statuts d’Adalhard de Corbie de l’an 822’, Le Moyen Âge, 68, pp. 91–123 and 233–269. Verhulst, A. (1965) ‘Karolingische Agrarpolitik: Das Capitulary De villis und die Hungersnöte von 792/793 und 805/806’, Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie, 13, pp. 175–189. Verhulst A. (1983) ‘La diversité du régime domanial entre Loire et Rhin à l’époque carolingienne’, in W. Janssen and D. Lohrmann (eds), Villa-Curtis-Grangia, Munchen, pp. 131–148. Verhulst, A. (1988) ‘Etude comparative du régime domanial à l’est et à l’ouest du Rhin à l’époque carolingienne’, in W. Janssen and D. Lohrmann (eds), Villa –Curtis-Grangia, Munchen, pp. 131–148. Verhulst, A. (1989) ‘The origins of towns in the Low Countries and the Pirenne thesis’, Past and Present, n° 122, 1989, pp. 3–35. Verhulst, A. (1999) The rise of cities in north-west Europe, Cambridge. Verhulst A., (2002) The Carolingian economy, Cambridge. Vogüé, A. de (1964) ‘Travail et alimentation dans les règles de saint Benoît et du Maître’, Revue bénédictine, 74, pp. 242–251. Ward-Perkins, B. (2005) The fall of Rome and the decline of civilization, Oxford. Wickham, C. (1997) ‘Debate: The feudal revolution’, Past and Present, 155, pp. 196–207. Wickham, C. (2005) Framing the Early Middle Ages. Europe and the Mediterranean, 400– 800, Oxford. Wickham, C. (2008) ‘Rethinking the structures of the Early Medieval Economy’, in J.R. Davies and M. McCormick (eds), The long morning of medieval Europe: new directions in Early Medieval studies, Hampshire-Burlington. Wickham, C. (2009) The inheritance of Rome. A history of Europe from 400 to 1000, London-New-York. Wiechmann, R. (1996) Edelmetalldepots der Wikingerzeit in Schleswig-Holstein. Von ‘Ringbrecher’ zur Münzwirtschaft, Offa-Bücher, 77, Neumünster. Wikander, O. (2007) ‘Sources of energy and exploitation of power’, in J.P. Oleson (ed.), The Oxford handbook of engineering and technology in the classical world, Oxford, pp. 136–157. Williamson, T. (2005) ‘Explaining regional landscape: East Anglia and the Midlands in the Middle Ages’, in C. Harper-Bill (ed.), Medieval East Anglia, Woodbridge, pp. 12–32. Wilson, D. M. (1962) ‘Anglo-Saxon rural economy. A survey of the archaeological evidence and a suggestion’, The Agricultural History Review, pp. 65–79. Yvinec, J.-H. (1988) ‘Alimentation carnée au début du Moyen Âge’, Anthropozoologica, special issue: L’animal dans l’alimentation humaine: les critères de choix, pp. 123–126.

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BRITISH ISLES

Illustration 3.1  Covent Garden piazza and market, 1771–1780, oil painting on canvas by John Collet

3 British Isles, 1000–1750* John Chartres The British Isles possessed natural comparative advantage over most of their North European neighbours in the growth of grass. Accordingly, both Britain and Ireland in 1000 AD were strong in animal husbandry and in the trade of animal produce. Over the next 750 years, population pressures led to increased colonization, reclamation of forest and marsh, restructuring of settlement into villages, especially in England, with the intensification and spread of arable husbandry. Population pressures thus produced classic Boserup effects up to around 1350 (Boserup, 2005), especially in lowland England, but its subsequent decline reduced the prosperity and specialized demand from towns, and in much of the country created a relapse into less intensive grazing, with some losses of village communities. However, rising real income in the late Middle Ages stimulated more commercial livestock farming, and export traffic in grain, hides and wool generated continuing commercial stimuli into the sixteenth century. By around 1550, the tensions between corn and wool in potential land uses combined with renewed population pressures and major changes in landownership, with the dissolution of English monasteries, restored the incentives for innovation in food production. While these stronger market incentives applied for the rest of the period, they were mediated through the growth of large towns, led by London, when population pressures were once more reduced in the middle quarters of the seventeenth century. By 1750, population was again growing, but increasingly concentrating into larger towns, and significant growth in real incomes and international trades created a richer England, enjoying high protein diets and access to new vegetables and fruit, with the ‘agricultural revolution’ being reflected in rising grain and meat output. Wales, much of Scotland, and Ireland remained much less subject to new capitalist systems, and displayed the more extensive food systems of the past. The ebb and flow of growth over this period thus increasingly differentiated the component nations of the British Isles, their food cultures, and supply systems, although all had by 1750 become much more productive and capable of sustaining Europe’s most rapid rates of population growth.

3.1  1000 – 1350s The period before 1750 divides naturally into three sections for the British Isles, and the first, from the second millennium onward, is the concern of this section. Many approaches to the agrarian histories of the British Isles in the eleventh century have tended to emphasize their ‘undeveloped’ characteristics, compared with some other *

I am very grateful for advice on the content of this chapter from my colleague, Dr Iona McCleery.

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map 3 British Isles, 1000–1750

Towns and cities Rivers

0

50

100 km

Aberdeen

S c o t l a n d Dundee

Perth Stirling

Falkirk

Glasgow

Edinburgh Tyn e

N O R T H

Dumfries Belfast

I r e l a n d

Newcastle Durham

Dublin

YORKSHIRE York Leeds

LANCASHIRE

Liverpool

Tre n

t

Manchester

E n g l a n d

Wexford

Nottingham

MIDLANDS rn Se ve

Wy

e

G O rea us t e

Worcester

Stratford-upon-Avon CAMBRIDGESHIRE Ipswich

BEDFORDGLOUCESTERSHIRE SHIRE OXFORDLechlade SHIRE

Bristol

HAMPSHIRE DORSET

C H A N N E L

70

Norwich

EAST ANGLIA SUFFOLK

Henley MIDDLESEX

Th am es

WILTSHIRE

DEVON

NORFOLK

Lea

W a l e s

Leicester

Coventry

Colchester Ware ESSEX

London KENT

S E A



British Isles, 1000–1750 | Chapter 3

European economies. They had modest levels of urban population, at 6 or 7 per cent of total, lacked extensive crafts and manufactures, and were engaged principally in the primary sectors of the economy, above all mining and agriculture. Much of the historiography has thus emphasized backwardness, and perhaps understated the real extent of markets and trade in foodstuffs. The islands proved nevertheless very attractive targets for Norse raiding, largely because of their intrinsic prosperity. England demonstrated that wealth in the management of a consistent currency, the Saxon silver penny, a kingdom politically integrated from around 750 A.D., and extensive if indirect evidence of trade. Ireland too sustained a strong silver currency before 1100, and coin finds in Viking hoards indicate the extent to which trade as well as plunder transferred these currencies to Scandinavia. The sustained strength of these currencies clearly indicated the extent of earnings from trade, in minerals, hides, wool, and some grain. The international market was thus visible in the early eleventh century, if undocumented.

Population and settlement patterns Population had been rising since before 900, although there is virtually no evidence on actual levels. The only direct source for population figures was England’s Domesday Book of 1086, from which some northern counties were excluded, and in which the damaging impact of the Norman Conquest was visible: this was a record of extensive recent attrition of towns and people. Basing estimates on later relativities, the range of populations in the four nations in the mid-eleventh century suggested 1.5–2.2 m ­ illion in England, around 580 000 in Ireland, and rather fewer in Scotland and Wales, respectively 250 000 and less than 100 000. This made the islands very lightly populated in terms of persons per km²: England 16.8, Wales 4.7, Scotland 3.1, and Ireland 7.2. While population c. 1050 had been increasing for around two centuries, levels were still significantly below those of the late Roman era, and in consequence there remained scope for the expansion of the margins of cultivation. The impact of the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 was disruptive, and for some period this dented the long-term pattern of trade and population growth. The harrying of Northern England left much land described as ‘waste’, and out of agricultural use, and several of England’s towns also contained extensive areas of destruction. Over a thousand villages in northern England were listed as ‘waste’ in 1086, although Chris Dyer has suggested that some of this may have reflected the reorganization of lands after destruction in 1069–70, with the remaining population moving to vacated better lands (Dyer, 2005: 87–90). The Domesday record noted over 150 towns or markets, some of which, like Oxford, Norwich and York also contained waste, traditionally explained as the damage contingent on the Conquest and the erection of castles, but which may also reflect wider adverse conditions for trade. There were very few urban centres in the north, mostly small, but there was growth in some of the smaller towns of southern and eastern England, like the southern ports, benefiting by the new links with Normandy. By 1100 Ireland had a range of ports, many the creation of the Vikings in the south and east – Galway, Limerick, Cork, Waterford, Wexford, and Dublin – and 71

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Wales had six or eight. Scotland’s towns were limited before 1100, mostly coastal in the east – Perth, Stirling, Dunfermline, and Roxburgh – as yet insufficient to make much impact on farm production. By contrast, much of the arable land of southern England had already neared the limit of cultivation, and the ploughed acreages of 1086 were barely smaller than those of 1914. Woodland and waste was limited in much of the country, though some, notably marshlands, contained the potential for further reclamation and expansion. Northern England, Scotland, and much of Wales had plentiful space for expansion, and by 1100 all were displaying the recurrence of population growth, the expansion of farming, and of trade. Ireland too possessed scope for expansion, but its experiences of famines in 1113–16, accompanied by reports of cannibalism and the sales of children into slavery indicated that its rural economy grew more slowly than that of Britain during the twelfth century. Reginald Lennard famously termed eleventh-century England ‘an old country’ to indicate the longevity of settlement and cultivation of much of its lowlands (Lennard, 1959). Some arable had been in pretty continuous cultivation since Roman times, but changes had been taking place from the tenth century, especially with the reorganization of earlier dispersed and hamlet settlement into newly modelled villages, sharing plough teams and ploughs, and farming with open field systems that appear to have been technically advanced by comparison with many parts of the nearby European mainland. These changing settlement patterns provide clear evidence of cropping and land use, indicative of the trading basis for many local economies. New settlement had been taking place throughout the Anglo-Saxon era, and was continuing into the eleventh century. H. E. Hallam identified 877 new settlements for the period 736–1086, roughly 7 per cent of the 13 371 recorded in Domesday Book in 1086. A third (293) were of Scandinavian origin, as indicated by the placename, dating from the years after 870 (see Hallam, 1988). While the interpretation is open to debate, place-name evidence provided indications of cropping and livestock farming that point to the nature of food markets. Hallam’s view suggested the designation of such new settlements as an indicator of rural economy. Thus 87 settlements with cattle and dairying elements were recorded c. 1086, such as Bulmer (Essex), Chiswick (Middlesex), Chawton (Hampshire), Melksham (Wiltshire), and Buttercrambe (Yorkshire, NR). Horses were recorded in 31 places, mostly appearing first in the mid-eleventh century, Horstead (Norfolk), Horsted (Kent), Horsham (Sussex), and Studley (Yorkshire, WR); sheep in 70 places, again many from the eleventh century, such as the seven Hardwicks, Shepshed (Leicestershire), and the many Shiptons, Sheptons and Shipleys, mostly located in predominantly pastoral regions. Goats (22), pigs (26) and bees (4) pointed to livestock specialisms with market linkage. While the southern parts of Domesday England contained much more arable, its place-names were less suggestive: wheat (20), barley (38), and rye (15), with most incidences first occurring in 1086, and may have pointed to change in the farm economy. If, then, these place-name elements observed in the late eleventh century do in fact point towards local and regional specialization, they suggest a great deal of livestock traffic in the period. 72



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Farming and food output The more detailed evidence of the Domesday survey itself provided further support and refined the picture. Sally Harvey’s work suggested that livestock may have been more significant to the lesser landholders than to demesne lords, although the comparisons can only be made for the eastern and south-western counties, perhaps supporting the name evidence discussed above (see Hallam, 1988). Close comparisons of demesne and other cattle in Devon for example, pointed to traffic in oxen, and two dairies were identified in the Vale of the White Horse (Berkshire) along with hundreds of acres of meadow, and substantial rentals in cheese. Sheep, by contrast, were significantly more concentrated into demesne enterprises, and where lords held significant flocks, other landholders may have found it hard to farm sheep: the more detailed Essex Domesday recorded pasture for 21 580 sheep, in 141 manors, with 14 366 held by demesnes. While sheep had other value, for manures, reflected in the lords’ practice of fold soke, milk, wool, and skins, they appear to have been farmed by larger and more market-oriented enterprises. Pigs were more concentrated into smaller enterprises, with lords enjoying rents for pannage rather than farming directly, even in Norfolk and Suffolk, two counties in which lords did farm swine more intensively. Many pig enterprises also suggested market orientation, with extensive systems of transhumance being employed, with professional swineherds, as on the Kentish Weald, plus others unrecorded in detail by the Domesday record, such as those of ‘the men who live in the woods’ at Newport Pagnell (Bucks). Harvey’s estimates of small producers’ pig herds in five southern counties in 1086 (Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, and Berkshire) suggested numbers approaching 200 000, and the conclusion that pig-keeping may have been more extensive and commercial in the eleventh century than later. Similar regional and local variation was also evident in arable farming. There was a great deal of demesne cultivation, but most of the new lords of the years after 1066 were more interested in returns than direct exploitation, and it was tenant land that must have sustained many of the flows to the market place. With only around 150 towns and markets identified in the period, there is a clear implication that there must have been a comparatively greater deal of arable autarky than in later centuries. Scotland appears to have displayed similar patterns of near-subsistence grain farming. There were concentrations of richer cereal and pulse farming on the coastal fringes of Wales; and while Ireland was also noted for its pastoral specialisms, arable farming was clearly present especially in the south and eastern half of the island, and was to grow significantly in later years. In England, Domesday recorded over 6 000 watermills, many held by multiple enterprises, and these may have been a greater indication of processing demand, food consumption, than of supply. Such mills also produced extensive yields of eels and other freshwater fish, products also traded into the towns and more substantial village centres. From 1100 onward, each of the four countries experienced growth in population, probably at different rates. Ireland seems to have had its growth retarded by the experience first of famines, but was then stimulated by immigration after the Anglo-Norman invasion of 1169, although the proportion of English migrants remained small. English 73

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growth was probably dented by the Civil Wars of 1138–43, but throughout the islands, population growth was sustained to the earlier fourteenth century. The exact scale of population growth remains very uncertain, and plausible arguments have suggested a total of 7.5–9 million for the islands around 1300, probably continuing to increase to the eve of the Black Death. Taking a middle point in the wide range of estimates, England probably had a population of 5 million by the 1330s, Wales around 400 000, Scotland 1.4 million, and Ireland 1.8 million. Bruce Campbell’s comparative ‘benchmarks’ of their development c. 1290, based upon the lower range of population estimates, suggested the contrasts in their comparative population densities: England 30.5 per km², Wales 13.9, Scotland 13.5, and Ireland 14.2 (Campbell, 2008). Overall, population and densities were double those of the 1050s. However, these aggregates hide some more meaningful variation within each of the countries. In each, the north and west were much less densely populated than the south and east. In Ireland, most of the north and west lay outside the English Lordship, and these Gaelic areas were less densely settled; most of the area of Scotland outside the east coast and central belt was similarly sparsely populated; and, bar the south-east corner, Wales was thinly settled. These variations were significantly greater and more significant for England, where a dozen counties, plus London and Middlesex were much more crowded, at around 51 per km², and were in Campbell’s view more populous then they were to be in the 1750s. The implications for our understanding of the processes of late-medieval ‘decline’ are striking. Postan’s classic ‘Malthusian’ analysis for earlier fourteenth-century England has never been applied to Ireland, Scotland or Wales, and while land hunger resulting from a population-resource imbalance may have been significant in much of midland and eastern England, it seems hard to apply outside this area1. Applying measures of ecclesiastical wealth, exports and money supply per head to his lower 1290 figures, Campbell suggested that Scotland was much closer to England in terms of comparative economic development, but that England’s ‘agrarian problem’ was significantly greater.

The growth of towns and trade Comparison of the histories of urbanization in the four countries provides further important background to the history of food supplies and markets. By the second quarter of the fourteenth century, England may have had 15 per cent of its population living in towns, and 9 per cent in larger towns of 2 000 persons or more; the Lordship of Ireland may have been close behind, with 14 and 5 per cent respectively, against Ireland overall at 7 and 3 per cent; Wales had 9 per cent in towns, but less than 1 per cent in the larger towns; and Scotland 7 and 3 per cent. The common experiences of urban development since the eleventh century had produced very different outcomes. Many historians have stressed the significance of this urban development in the expansion of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. One point of emphasis remains 1

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The familiar ‘Postan thesis’ is treated to a very sceptical review in Hallam (1981: 10–16).



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from the duality posed by Henri Pirenne, the role of urbanization in promoting towns as islands of freedom in feudal seas, following the medieval adage, ‘town air makes free’ (Pirenne, 1939). As population grew, and land hunger became evident in much of midland and eastern England, the relative liberty of the towns was perceived as of increasing value. Towns were thus significant as places for the trade in agricultural produce, foods, and crafts, as food processing centres, and of growing points of exchange and specialization in a commercializing high medieval economy. The number, typology and functions of Britain’s medieval towns are thus potentially critical to our understanding of agro-food systems. Richard Britnell’s recent summary provides a basis for assessing this growth (Britnell, 2004). Between 1050 and 1300, towns had grown to just under 700 in number, a net increase of perhaps 530 on the level of 1050, a trebling of the base figure. England’s towns had grown from 150 to perhaps 500 (counting the 112 boroughs of 1086 and another 40 or so markets); Wales had 75, Scotland 62, and Ireland 54. As is implicit in Campbell’s figures of ‘urban’ populations cited above, these towns clearly differed significantly in size, character and origin, and their functionality in the medieval food trading systems was also correspondingly varied. The most familiar form of growth came in a variety of ‘new towns’, settlements growing organically and being granted the privileges of boroughs; those ‘planted’ onto new sites, frequently areas of manorial waste contiguous to existing villages; and towns created with or growing under the shelter of a castle or fortified tower, visible particularly in Wales, Scotland and the Lordship of Ireland, akin to the bastides of English Gascony. From the viewpoint of the planter, political and strategic aims were accompanied by the potential of economic development. The majority of new or replanted towns in England created in the period 1066 - 1135 were alongside castles, characteristics shared by Scotland with St Andrews (1140) and Dundee (before 1190), and Ireland, most distinctly with Carrickfergus (c.1200). In Wales, many similar plantations occurred with the Edwardian conquest, especially in the years 1271–1300, when around thirty new towns were established. In general, however, such new towns were less fortified than these examples would suggest, but the processes of creation provide the basis for assessing their linkages with food supply systems. Traditional historical accounts have assumed the centrality of food trades among their specialized urban functions of both old and new towns. Thus Winchester, c. 1300, had 8 millers, 12 bakers, 60 brewers, 11 butchers, and 7 fishmongers, with many more hucksters and petty traders. The 1297 tax assessment for Dunstable (Bedfordshire, created in 1119), revealed extensive farm livestock, grain (52 bushels [1.8 kilolitres] per taxpayer), skins and tanning stocks, meat, fish, grease and tallow, fruit, wood and charcoal, leather, malt and poulterer’s stocks in addition to directly industrial produce. Smaller towns had significantly greater food trading and processing functions, and the small Irish borough of Fethard, in southern Tipperary, secured a murage grant (a tax levied for the construction or maintenance of town walls) in 1292 that listed the commodities on which this could be charged: horses, mares, oxen, cows, sheep, goats, and hogs, plus hides, salted meat, butter, cheese, onions, garlic, fish, fuels, honey, and iron goods. These perhaps, were the ranges of commodities 75

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typical of the smaller Irish towns of the period, but characterized by petty exchange. The development or establishment of towns thus promoted trade for the surrounding countryside, and as their industrial and trading functions advanced, so too did the demand for local food supplies. A more careful and balanced analysis of the food trades of these new towns may suggest the need for a little more caution. Many towns, even some newly planted boroughs, retained their own agricultural interests, and had fields on which crops could be grown and beasts pastured, but the pattern varied. In general, there was a lower probability of these newly planted towns having fields and farming resources sufficient to offer reasonable degrees of autonomy. Thus Stratford-upon-Avon (Warwickshire), created by the Bishop of Worcester in 1196, had little land beyond its burgage plots, and the manor of Old Stratford from which its lands had been cut retained both farmland and villein tenures. Similar creations without dependent farmland took place at Leeds (Yorkshire, WR) in 1207, Chipping Campden (Gloucestershire) in the early 1180s, and Tavistock (Devon), of superior status as a stannary town, with the remainder of its manor being known as Hurdwick. At Stratford, Leeds and New Malton (Yorkshire, NR) three sides of the new town were surrounded by the old manor, the fourth being the river alongside which they had been planted. In such cases, the creative impact upon food production in the contiguous manors was powerful, and some lords added the obligation to supply the created town to the tenures of the contiguous manor. By contrast, many of the older and ‘organic’ urban communities that were expanding in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries had quite extensive fields, and retained farming interests into the eighteenth century. Thus Cambridge, Leicester, and Nottingham all retained their fields, and by the eighteenth century were restricting their spatial expansion. Some new towns, even in the Welsh plantations such as Denbigh, had agricultural land, as did the major new Scottish port, Ayr. As indicated above, many of these towns were still of very modest scale by 1300, and were insufficient to subsist solely as a craftsman, and some townsmen thus pursued multiple economies, including farming. At Aberdeen the seasonal demands of farming took priority over trades for many. These small-scale supply systems to the more modest towns, combining the produce of the town fields and of nearby manors, were the fundamentals of food trades around 1300, and Britnell suggests that these short-distance direct exchanges may have accounted for more than a third of all transactions in meat and grain (Britnell, 2004).

Regulated marketing Urban growth was thus very significant to the development of food trades in this expansion phase of the medieval rural economy, and it was accompanied by the development of the two principal institutions of regulated marketing, the market and the fair. Many markets were conterminous with the new towns, but not all: England had 600 to 700 markets in 1200, established by licence or by ancient rights, but added another 1146 by 1299. Large numbers of this total must therefore have been outside the formal boroughs, the smaller rural markets in which so much peasant trade took place. Even allowing for the fact that some markets and new towns, failed to prosper, 76



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this represented a major expansion. It was perhaps densest in its impact on the most intensely settled midland and eastern parts of England that showed the greatest symptoms of land hunger in the thirteenth century, competition for peasant holdings, and signs of changing field systems and farming practices, the classic innovation in the face of population growth central to Ester Boserup’s models of change. Such markets were less pronounced in the other countries: lower densities of settlement meant that markets in Wales grew largely as urban phenomena, and in Scotland food trade was confined to the burghs. In some parts of Ireland markets proliferated in the thirteenth century, and by 1299 38 market towns were recorded in east Cork alone, though many were shortly to disappear as economic conditions worsened. Fairs too grew at approximately the same rate in the thirteenth century, with 1286 being granted by the Crown between 1200 and 1299, and a total of perhaps 1500 in existence by the 1320s. These were predominantly seasonal, rather than weekly, and clustered into the summer and early autumn. Fairs played little part in the grain trades, but served the livestock sector, including traffic in cheese and butter. In the south and east, several fairs gained international significance, but for the majority of Britain’s food trades these fairs were of marginal significance. Seigneurs and the more substantial tenants seem not to have used the fairs for their own sales of foodstuffs. Horseshoes, tools, nails and other iron goods, textiles, timber and timber produce may have been traded there, and in general, according to David Farmer fairs were the place of purchases, not sales(see Hallam, 1988; Miller, 1991). The peasantry may have engaged in petty trade on this seasonal basis, but the fair for most before 1350 was not a major aspect of the foodstuff trades.

Transport and the supply of major towns The evidence of widespread petty exchange in the food trades of these years was supported by that of increased use of horses in the carrying trades, both for demesnes and for the tenant farmers. Contrary to the classic neo-Malthusian views of the determinants of preferences for draught animals, which have cited Walter of Henley (his Le Dite de Hosebondrie, a book on husbandry, c. 1275) to suggest that increasingly land-hungry peasants had no option but the ox, which could be eaten at the end of its working life, and performed with less speed but greater endurance, market conditions advantaged the horse. John Langdon’s demonstration of widespread use by demesnes to sell grain to the larger towns was paralleled by the overwhelming demand for the peasantry to sell locally on a small scale, and here the speed of horse-hauling was paramount (Langdon, 1984). This technical innovation in thirteenth-century peasant farming thus dovetailed exactly with the evidence of the widespread growth of towns, and above all of markets. The same period saw the increasing replacement of fords by bridges, and improved bridges, as lords increased investment in transport infrastructure. Retrospective analysis of medieval England’s endowment of bridges from sixteenth-century sources indicated the extensive provision on most of the great rivers of the country. Bridges, and even less favourable river crossings, contributed significantly to the success of new and enlarged 77

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towns: Boroughbridge (Yorkshire, WR) was a new town of around 1145 located at the site of a new crossing of the River Ure; 46 English and Welsh planted towns were river or estuarine ports; and new bridges were critical aspects of the development of Ware (Hertfordshire), Durham and Perth. Glasgow, Dumfries and Stirling developed around the lowest bridging point of their respective rivers. The growth of towns, and the relative growth of the urban sector of the economy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as population pressures diminished, coupled with horse-hauling, enhanced the possibility of more extensive regional trade for the larger producers. Increasingly, the command economies of the larger demesnes and estates could sell to more distant markets, and access to seaports was important in determining the specific sources of supply. During the thirteenth and earlier fourteenth centuries, river traffic also increased and many streams that would not have been fully navigable throughout the year offered the potential for at least seasonal traffic. The very extensive natural waterways of eastern England clearly assisted its development as a region of food production for the market. Some place-name evidence from the period pointed to the petty inland ports from which even small loads could be shipped by river: the place name ‘hythe’ was a common marker of such ports, or of a shipping point, as at Reach and Burwell in Cambridgeshire, some of the lesser communities on the Thames, the ferry point of 1279 at Bablock Hythe, or the new town in Kent, New Hythe, created before 1066. The extent of navigable water is disputed: it appears to have expanded to a peak at around 1300, but the upper reaches of many rivers were threatened by competing demands from watermills. Mills were also expanding in number as population grew, and were often incompatible with navigation. Although their numbers seem to have fallen in the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as the cereal economy contracted, the overall assessment of navigable waterways in the period is that these were also less extensive by 1450 than in 1300. Quite different structures applied to the food supply of the larger towns, although the most detailed analysis has been conducted only for London. The city grew significantly in size and in its share of England’s urban population in the years 1066–1300, and its sources of supply expanded. The principal agents of food supply were the cornmongers, of whom 146 have been identified for the period 1280–1350, over half dwelling in the Queenhithe area of the city, above London Bridge, and thus concerned particularly with grains entering the city from the west along the Thames; 18 per cent were located in the Billingsgate area, pointing to supply networks from downriver, principally Kent; and another 14 per cent were in the Newgate area, supplied inland, mostly from the counties to the north. The bulk of these grains were sold to the leading bakers and brewers, with smaller firms evident in both trades. Some supplies of flour also entered the city, largely by land, and through the agency of smaller producers and dealers. Allowing for the demands of livestock, then the ten principal supplying counties were marketing over 500 000 kilocalories in grain, sufficient to feed a London population of up to 80 000, broadly in line with most acceptable estimates of its size in 1300 (Campbell et al, 1993). The same study analysed the networks of supply and sale. Transport costs of this grain varied very considerably by mode of carriage, with carting twelve times the price 78



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of river carriage, and coastal shipping perhaps half. Estimates for c. 1300 indicated carting costs at 0.8–1.1 pence per tonne kilometre, river carriage on the Thames at 0.1 pence, but higher (0.3 pence) on the River Lea to the north of London, from Ware, and 0.06 per tonne kilometre coastwise. Clearly land carriage was also involved in part of the water transport of London’s grains, but these comparative transport costs pointed to the rationale of London’s system of food supply, and suggested a system broadly compatible with the expectations of a von Thünen model, in which a large central market was held to express its demand through a series of concentric zones of different farming intensity, ending, with zone 6, in extensive livestock husbandry. The map derived from such assumptions on transport costs showed that the provisioning of London came principally from the south eastern quadrant of England, from Lincolnshire in the north, to Kent in the south, and Oxfordshire in the west. Taking as an example the Oxfordshire manor of Cuxham, which focused its production on the market, c. 1300, it cost 6.3pence to carry a quarter of wheat the 79 miles to London, via transhipment to the river at Henley on Thames, and London could have been supplied entirely from within the 13.3 pence price contour. This meant that even notable grain-producing counties – north Oxfordshire and Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, and many parts of Essex – were precluded from the supply of London, and nowhere beyond 20 miles from navigable water could do so on strict economic criteria. London cornmongers certainly travelled widely within this region to secure sources of supply, as they did in 1295 when contracted to purchase for the Crown. Their suppliers consisted principally of the larger institutions, with conventual estates selling around a quarter of their receipts to the market, but more than half being sold from Episcopal, Lay and Royal demesnes. Such institutions of course accumulated grains for sale through some direct production, but more in tithe and rents, and they possessed the storage capacity to do this at a time when it is generally agreed that there was little granary capacity in the capital, certainly quantities insufficient to carry over from harvest to harvest. This, and the analysis of price patterns suggested that the grain market was as yet by 1300 insufficiently mature to conform fully to von Thünen expectations, and these large estates effectively supplied a large share of the London market through a command economy, making specific and strategic sales decisions that were not wholly ‘rational’. Within this region of supply, however, London’s large and growing demand was able to stimulate improved farming, and some enhanced specialization, but the lack of elasticity of supply may also have come to act as a brake on London’s growth.

3.2 1350–1500 Contraction and decline All parts of the islands experienced contraction in the fourteenth century, in population, economic activity and in the margins of cultivation. Many historians have seen the onset of this medieval ‘crisis’ after 1290, and the famine years of 1315–22 as symptoms of diminishing returns in cereal farming attributable to population pressures. Decline was thus visible by the second quarter of the fourteenth century, and 79

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was completed by the massive mortality of the series of plagues from 1348–75, which reduced population by around half. Fifteen subsequent epidemics from 1377–1485 seem to have acted like rain dripping through a leaky roof, depressing England’s capacity to recover, and by 1450 population had fallen to 2.5–2.75 million. Scotland too experienced decline, but there is less evidence of the plagues or of over-cultivation of corn lands to explain change, and the English wars and other domestic factors much be added to the mix. Wales, surprisingly in the light of its sparse population, seems to have experienced exceptionally heavy plague mortality, and in Ireland decline was visible from the 1280s, produced by the resurgence of Irish attacks on the English lordship, attrition through the Bruce invasion from Scotland in 1315–18, and then by the plagues, which may have had a differential impact upon the English settlements, which were more concentrated behind defensive walls and in the towns. Population figures are lacking for all countries, but conventional assumptions have placed the extent of decline as nearly comparable with that of England. By 1500, the population of the British Isles may have been below 3.25 million, little removed from the eleventh-century figure.

The impact on towns and the food market The impact of such changes was differential in its effect on the food market. Some towns prospered more than others, and decline was far from universal. London’s population probably halved between 1300 and 1400, but trade growth and the expansion of its functions as the capital city sustained recovery, and it may have had a population of as high as 100 000 by the early 1500s. Of the other leading towns in England, Colchester, Salisbury and Newcastle resisted decline most effectively, when the eight other largest urban centres declined, and in the group with population of 1 000 to 4 000 in 1377, only a few – Exeter, Plymouth, Worcester, Reading, and Ipswich – resisted decline or grew. While there were thus changes in the hierarchy of towns, and London above all was beginning to grow significantly, the overall proportion of the ‘urban’ population in England had not significantly increased. The extent of urban changes in the other countries is even less clear, but changing trade conditions seemed to have led to the comparative growth of Edinburgh to a population of around 12 500 by 1500, but other Scottish burghs stagnated. In Ireland, the port towns of the south and east stood up to the changed conditions on the basis of international trades, but the pattern overall in Ireland was, as elsewhere, one of decline from the late thirteenth-century peak. Within this contracted economy, however, there were significant changes. Real wage levels increased from the 1350s onward, although the earlier fifteenth century may have seen some recession, and the consequences were shifts in the demand for food, especially from the towns. In the east of Britain, where trade growth across the North Sea promoted prosperity, this led to the expansion of the demand for meat, poultry, fish and specialized products such as East Anglian rabbits. Aristocratic and ecclesiastical consumers also purchased fruit and vegetables, but these were also widely consumed by lesser folk; the archaeological analysis of late-medieval urban cess-pits 80



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has provided evidence of the ‘medieval fruit salad’ they enjoyed as part of everyday diet (Dyer, 1989: 196–202). The completion of England’s conquest of Wales and the pacification of the borders opened the way for Welsh droving of sheep and cattle, the ultimate source of some of this enhanced supply of meat, while the Scottish wars and disorderly border country precluded the same changes. Political disturbances in Ireland also depressed the potential for the growth in traded livestock. In the countryside, land resources were gradually reallocated to the more favourable uses, and deserted or shrunken village sites indicated a shift towards more extensive sheep farming, where much earlier subsistence arable had been found. Sheep moved into what have been called the ‘half-wanted lands’ under the stimulus of the growth of the wool trade, and the specific demands for fine long-staple wools required to supply the cloth export trades to the Low Countries and Germany that became so pronounced in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. While conditions overall were probably insufficient greatly to increase aggregate demand for agricultural produce, there was a clear shift towards trades in higher value-added goods. The evidence of late medieval diets suggested significant qualitative changes. In England, more wheat was consumed, and grain was more frequently baked rather than being consumed as an ingredient in pottage, with some domestic ovens found among peasant houses. Dyer’s analysis of harvest diets from Norfolk indicated the significant advance of meat and ale in diet, assessed both by value and by calorific supply from the later fourteenth century, and the relative decline of dairy produce, fish and pottage corns (Dyer, 1989: 151–160). Beef and mutton increasingly supplanted bacon in the meat ration. In the towns, there remained anxieties about the potential disruption of supply by forestallers and other intermediaries, but a similar shift towards a higher protein diet, with more meat also observable. This expanded consumption of cattle and sheep for food pointed to the growth of traffic in livestock, one of several symptoms of increasing travel in the period, which helped to develop the roadside inn as a feature of the English highway. It also stimulated the marketing of grains in the form of ale, much of it by the alewives of the countryside, as domestic production of ale provided new cash crops for the rural household. In towns, regulation of baking and brewing through the Assizes of Bread and Ale from the mid thirteenth century controlled food supplies, and may have led to greater scale of production, but brewing was strongly female as an occupation in towns as in the countryside, and women were also commercial urban brewers, such as Denise Marlere of Bridgwater (Somerset), who died in 1401. Women were to remain significant ale producers up to the end of the sixteenth century. Consumption of ale seems to have risen in England from the later fourteenth century, and was joined by the gradual adoption of the imported new taste, for hopped beer, from the early fifteenth century. As Judith Bennett has shown, native production of beer increased only gradually, but grew in towns where larger-scale manufacture took place (Bennett, 1996). Its capital requirements, and capacity for geographically wider trading zones, coupled with the biases of the regulatory system to favour beers against ales, led to the long-term displacement of women from the manufacturing process. By 1574, London’s 32 beer brewers averaged four times the weekly output of the 58 ale 81

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Illustration 3.2  A wayside alehouse, c. 1330, as depicted in a ­manuscript

brewers, and by the earlier seventeenth century, England’s beer trade was concentrating into two sectors, the urban commercial brewery and the brewing victualler, producing ale or beer for direct retail sales, with the traditional female ale-wives in deep decline. Butchers grew in numbers in many towns, or at least in their share of urban trades on the back of these changed dietary expectations, with many towns having their shambles, the specialized retail centre of butchery. Droving trades of cattle and sheep from Wales and the north were probably greater in scale by the middle years of the fifteenth century, but should not be exaggerated: they were probably more significant in raising farm income in the supplying zones, but the sources of meat for most larger towns, even London, remained local or regional. Many of the Scottish towns shared this shift towards meat consumption, and in Ireland and Wales, as in the northern and western parts of England, these changed circumstances tended to confirm the significance of livestock in rural economy, where monetary exchange remained more rudimentary. Late medieval Ireland exported such commodities as salmon, and imported salt from Chester and Brittany, as inputs to domestic food and leather trades, but before 1500 sold little of its butter, bacon and meat abroad. Petty sales in both urban and rustic markets of such goods as eggs, dairy produce, and garden products are largely invisible to the formal record, but were also largely the sphere of the female trader. The expansion of the high medieval economies had thus produced intensification, and some significant innovation in the organization of food production and supply networks, and the declining population after the 1340s led more to readjustment than to complete retardation. The advanced sectors of England and Scotland, connected with the eastern and southern coasts of the island traded in grains and other foodstuffs in the coastal and wider North Sea economies, but as yet the west remained largely undeveloped. The gains from specialization in the East Anglian farm economy made under the most intense population pressures in classic Boserup form were retained, if the intensity of activity was reduced, and the area gained from the gradual increase in the relative significance of London, Edinburgh, and other eastern towns and ports. 82



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Periodic reinforcements of the Assizes of Bread and Ale, or of action against forestalling occurred, but there was little sign in much of the late medieval period that such controls were of great impact on marketing systems.

3.3 1500–1750 Conditions gradually altered from the early sixteenth century. Population increased after years of stasis, but even by 1550 was little higher than in 1350, and on some estimates may not have exceeded pre-Black Death levels until the middle of the eighteenth century. Many English towns suffered continuing decline, and the overall pattern of urban demand up to the end of the sixteenth century does not suggest much ground for scarcity in food provision. Yet the patterns were more those of change than of even decline, and between 1450 and 1550 London’s growing primacy reflected the expansion of its share of the cloth and wool trades, relative advance against the next cohort of towns, and the root cause of the decline of centres like Beverley, Nottingham, Leicester, and Newark, where structural changes in cloth production and export markets intensified the generic impact of agricultural decline. As rural cloth manufacture developed, it placed competitive pressures on some traditional towns, while adding to the plurality of occupations in the countryside and raising local and regional income levels in the market towns. These economic changes thus intensified the food demands of the largest centres, whilst adding to the food requirements of many smaller communities. Anxieties about urban decline were thus able to coexist with fears of scarcity for much of the sixteenth century.

The growth of London and other towns The overwhelming feature of change was the rapidity of London’s growth (including its expanding suburbs), from perhaps 80 000 before 1500, to 120 000 in 1550, 200 000 in 1600, and 375 000 in 1650. London was the capital of perhaps Europe’s most centralized state, was growing very fast by comparison with all others, containing 7 per cent of England’s population in 1650, when Paris took only 2.5 per cent of all France, and this made its food supply systems very different from anywhere else in the British Isles. While drawing upon the same zones of supply for its grains as in the Middle Ages, it also had periodic recourse to the international supply system of the North Sea area, and to the agency of cornfactors who traded in international markets. It was already more dependent in 1500 on extended systems of middlemen and merchants, and changes before 1650 intensified this pattern. Food supply and processing trades were heavily represented among its occupations, with 8.9 per cent of all parishes, and 11.4 per cent of its extra-mural parishes comprised of victualling trades, in the years 1540–1600. It thus expressed primacy in the English urban system, containing in 1600 a population in excess of the next seventeen towns in the country, had a much higher per capita level of income, as well as extremes of wealth and poverty, and was thus increasingly able to express specialized demand for foodstuffs that induced supply responses. 83

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Notable in this were the growth of market gardens and similar activities in the outer and southern suburbs, areas such as Putney, Barnes, Battersea, where the ready supply of London’s river-borne night soils provided rich fertilisers for intensive garden crops. It became perhaps the first and most obvious intensive inner von Thünen zone of specialization in the British Isles. The influx of horticultural expertise through ‘Flemish’ [sic] protestant refugees brought new crops and techniques, and government patronage both supported these migrants and promoted their crops and especially roots such as carrots and turnips, as particularly suitable food for the poor. London’s zone of supply in the early seventeenth century thus intensified its traditional links with East Anglia, the counties upstream and downstream on the Thames, and into southern Kent and Sussex for some foods and timber fuels, and north up the Lea valley for dairy supplies and hay for the city’s vastly increasing population of horses. Political, cultural, and trade changes outside of farming thus made London a great ‘engine of growth’ and the creator of a wide range of supply responses. It is difficult to sustain similar arguments for the rest of the towns of England and Wales, or for the leading urban centres of Scotland and Ireland, where no growth of a comparative scale can be observed. Alan Everitt argued that the historiography of food systems has been unduly dominated by the classic work of Norman Gras, with the result of over-emphasizing London’s systems and needs (see Thirsk, 1967). Assessing grain supply zones in east Somerset c 1600, for example, he suggested that the towns of Bruton and Wincanton were the principal sources of corn for around seven thousand people in the surrounding clothing districts, and miners and quarry workers were served in similar measure by Derby. In Scotland, c 1600, the urban hierarchy was dominated as in the Middle Ages by the four major cities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Dundee, and each stimulated specialization in food production from its surrounding region, but the country lacked a middle-rank in its urban hierarchy, and the restrictive trade practices of many smaller burghs limited their impact on rural improvement. Wales remained very thinly urbanized, with very few centres in 1600 able to express the kind of intensive demands for foodstuffs that could stimulate agrarian change, and many of its towns and fairs served more significantly as gathering grounds for English livestock imports. In Ireland, only Dublin offered concentrated urban demand in 1600, and although the successive years of peace permitted growth, which was also stimulated by the English plantation, food supply systems seem to have been largely localized, but with hides and butter being sold abroad as well as at home. Many of these towns were centres of small manufacture, trade in textiles and similar goods, but also developed as food processing and retailing centres, often on a modest scale. In rank order, butchers, bakers, fishmongers, and brewers were major elements of urban populations, perhaps averaging 15 to 20 per cent of all recorded occupations in sixteenth-century English towns. Analysis of freemen’s registers showed 36 butchers and 27 bakers in Coventry in 1522, 21 bakers and 14 butchers in Northampton (1524) and 27 butchers and 15 bakers in Leicester (1510–40). Worcester recorded over 30 butchers in the probate records of the later sixteenth century, and Manchester, a manorial town with a population of around 2 000 in the later sixteenth century, had 50 butchers’ stalls paying rent in 1599, shared between 23 native and 16 foreign butchers, 84



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with lower numbers of bakers, probably limited by continuing suit of mill and the use of the manorial oven. Such towns in the middling ranks probably attracted market garden produce and horticulturalists, but the evidence is very limited. Norwich, a major centre of refugees and the second town of England in both 1524–5 and 1700, received its first 300 ‘Douchemen’ [sic] in 1565, and had over 4500 by 1583. It was an important market for their new garden produce, although fewer gardeners were numbered amongst Norwich’s ‘strangers’ than those of Sandwich (Kent), Yarmouth and Colchester. Adrian Coesse, who died in Norwich in 1595 was a kitchen gardener, producing turnips and roots, leeks, parsnips, herbs [vegetables], and sallets [salads]. Francis van Dycke (died 1597) was a more substantial farmer-gardener, with four cows, and 8 acres of crops in the ground, consisting of barley, wheat and rye, and roots, a fairly typical mixture for such urban-fringe new gardeners. Such suppliers were also found around other towns before 1640 – Oxford, Banbury, Henley, York, Nottingham, Bristol, and Ipswich – and clusters of gardeners were developing in and around Sandy (Bedfordshire). Around many other English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish towns historians have assumed groups of cowkeepers, gardeners, pigkeepers and others to have existed, but probably representing the petty enterprises of peasant farming (see Thirsk, 1985, ii). Up to the middle of the seventeenth century, with impact varied between the four countries, there was continuing concern for the security of the food supply, reflected in the policies of both central and local government. If root-growing was to be welcomed as a potential source of food for the urban poor in England, then the fear of merchants and middlemen was a major feature of this period. Orders to apply the Assizes of Bread and Ale with rigour, to enforce the English statutes of 1552 and 1563 against forestallers and regraters, restriction of brewing and starch-making, control or prohibition of exports, orders to set up or open public granaries, and efforts to promote the import of grains were all characteristics of state regulation up to the mid-seventeenth century, approaches designed to dampen the potential for disorder. Some evidence suggests that mortality in England was more harvest-sensitive before the 1640s than afterwards, and that in terms of food availability there may have been ‘two Englands’ in the sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries, with the better integrated, more arable south and east relatively less vulnerable to poor harvests than the more pastoral north and west. Similar considerations may also have applied to the highland zone of Scotland, and to the experience of Ireland, where the costs of dearth in terms of public order were potentially higher.

The changed environment, 1640–1750 Population growth appears also to have ceased around the 1640s in England, and was soon accompanied by a shift in the corn supply from scarcity to surplus. Scotland shared this profile of population change, with perhaps a greater attenuation in the later seventeenth century, and despite the damaging impact of war in the 1640s, Ireland grew steadily, sustained by average immigration of over 1 000 per annum in the second half of the seventeenth century. Price trends suggest Wales shared the experiences of England and Scotland, with significant later seventeenth-century attrition on a low base. 85

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More significant, perhaps, was the accelerating continued growth of London, which reached 400 000 by 1650, 575 000 by 1700, and 675 000 in 1750, around 11 per cent of England’s total population, a higher level than any other European city of the period. Added to this was its significantly higher level of real incomes than the rest of England, and of the British Isles as a whole, and it was clear that London was a fundamental source of innovation in food supply in the period, much as argued by the contemporary observer, Daniel Defoe, for whom, c. 1700, there was scarcely any part of England unaffected by the transmitted demand of London’s eaters. London anticipated wider changes in England, where rapid urban growth developed after 1650, to take the ‘urban’ proportion of the population (defined as persons living in towns of 10 000 or more) from 5.8 per cent in 1600 to 16.7 in 1750, and 20.3 in 1800, nearing the levels of the coastal Low Countries , which was moving in the opposite direction; Scotland followed, but later, and whilst Ireland’s urban population also grew, it remained one of the most ‘rural’ countries of Western Europe in 1750. Comparative figures were provided by Jan de Vries, but only for the rare cases of towns of over 10 000 population, but these make the case clearly: no town in Wales met this criterion even in 1801; Scotland had 5.3 per cent of it population in large towns in 1700, 9.2 per cent in 1750, and 17.3 by 1800; and Ireland 3.4 per cent in 1700, 5.0 per cent in 1750, and only 7.0 per cent in 1800. For most of the islands, the qualitative changes in food supply that accompanied the movement towards urban life came later. By contrast, E.A. Wrigley’s reworking of these figures suggested that England’s ‘catch-up’ from a modest position in the urban league accounted for more than half of European large-town growth, 1600–1800, 57 percent of that 1700–50, and 70 per cent of growth 1750–1800. For the British Isles, then, the dynamic impact of urban change appeared concentrated largely into England (de Vries, 1984; Wrigley, 1987). Population growth varied significantly between the four countries after 1650. Ireland sustained the most remarkable growth, rising from around 2 million in 1687 to 5 million in 1800, England from 5.3 in 1650 to 8.7 in 1801, and Scotland and Wales grew more slowly, the former from 1.23 in 1691 to 1.61 in 1800, and Wales from less than 400 000 in the earlier seventeenth century to around 600 000 in 1801. On their own, these figures fail fully to account for price trends, or for the reduction of harvest-related crisis mortality. Although harvest crises continued, especially in the 1690s and the 1790s, England is generally agreed to have broken free from famine after the 1650s; and Scotland experienced its last national famine in 1695, with serious effects running through to 1700, and a population loss estimated to lie between 5 and 15 per cent, the direct result of increased mortality, reduced fertility, and migration to Ulster. Ireland’s rapid growth to 1800 was all the more remarkable in the light of the famines of 1728–9 and 1740–1, the latter reducing population to 1687 levels and being the first partially attributable to the failure of the potato crop. Overall, this growth in population was managed without vast recourse to imports from abroad, with price increases that were largely manageable, and in England, and Scotland after the 1760s, the purchasing power of wages largely rose. Even Ireland, a by-word for poverty in the eighteenth century, may have been poor in terms of urbanization and money wages, but enjoyed a nutritious diet: anthropometric analysis suggests 86



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Illustration 3.3  The Mapp of Lubberland, c. 1670, engraving

the Irish ‘poor’ may have been significantly taller then their English counterparts at the end of the century.

Changes in patterns of food consumption In terms of food marketing, the implications of these comparisons are striking. Contemporaries commented on the potato’s dominance of the Irish diet, averaging 4–5 kilos per day for the average adult male, producing the aphorism ‘potatoes in the morning, potatoes at noon, and if I got up at midnight, it would still be potatoes’, Scotland remained heavily dependent upon oats until rising real incomes stimulated the diversification of diet in the later eighteenth century, as did Wales, where cheese and other dairy produce added to dietary regimes that were more characteristic of later fifteenth-century patterns in England. This contrasted very strongly with the experience of much of England, where rising living standards permitted real diversification of diet in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with the poorer classes gradually adopting some of the luxury new foodstuffs that had entered élite diets from the sixteenth century. Gregory King’s estimates of the average expenditure of households in 1695 suggested that over 40 per cent was spent on meat, dairy produce, fish, fowl and eggs, and fruit, roots and garden produce, only 20 per cent on bread and grains, 87

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and 34 per cent on ale, beer, cider, wines and spirits, a very significant change from the cereal, pottage and ale diet of a century earlier (King, 1973). England’s experience thus suggested a subtle variant of Engel’s Law, whereby real income increases were translated not simply into reduced proportionate expenditures on food, but rather a shift towards higher protein and fattier foods. In England, and after 1760, Scotland, we see strong evidence of the ‘industrious revolution’ proposed by de Vries, whereby new commodities and consumer goods provided major incentives to the intensification of work, raising the effective supply of labour and levels of disposable family income (Vries, 2008). England’s rapid and extensive urbanization represented an element of this change, but so too did the experience, especially in the midlands and north, of widespread proto-industrialization: by 1750, Wrigley estimated that a third of England’s population was to be classified as ‘rural, non-agricultural’, and by 1801 this group equalled the proportion of agricultural workers outside the larger towns. Combining this with the evidence of rising purchasing power of wages, between the 1640s and the 1780s, powerful changes in potential demand were being made (Wrigley, 1987). De Vries has illustrated the impact of such changes in the cases of imported sugar, tobacco, coffee, cottons, and spirits, but the domestic food market was a major beneficiary (de Vries, 2008). Two groups of evidence serve to illustrate these changes. Dairy produce that had long been perceived as elements of pauper diets, and remained so in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, moved up the social strata in the later sixteenth century, and during the later seventeenth century these ‘white meats’ spread upwards in the social scale into wider urban consumption. London’s zone of supply for cheese expanded over the century after 1650, through its very active cheesemongers, drawing supplies by sea from Cheshire and Suffolk, overland from the midland counties, from market centres such as the Bell Inn at Stilton (Huntingdonshire) which gave its name to Leicestershire and Warwickshire cheeses, and down the Thames from Lechlade (Gloucestershire), all of this cheese being designated ‘Double Gloucester’ in the market place. There was thus a widened zone of supply and the beginnings of attribution of regional brand names, even if as yet, before 1750, these were not geographically precisely-defined. The greatest of London’s cheesemongers, Abraham Dakin, handled over a quarter of the capital’s total supply of butter in 1730, and in 1733 dealt in a third of all that was carried overland to the capital, 1 030.4 tonnes. The increased output of butter, much of it from further north, in Yorkshire and Durham, was also an alternative to cheese in many districts, and provided an intermediate input to other foodstuffs, as did access to salt: the famous despatch of potted char from Windermere to London, noted by Defoe, was an important symbol of these richer diets, and of the role of butter as component rather than final product. Luxury foods had been potted in tin-glazed delftware or ‘gallypots’ from the early seventeenth century, and the development of stoneware in London, Staffordshire, and many parts of the midlands and north supplied the jars for potting and preserving that could reach more extensive markets. Pots provided a more durable alternative to the pie crusts traditionally associated with keeping meat, game and fish. Butter for the table was itself salted and potted, as surviving seventeenth- and eighteenth-century pots from Staffordshire, Dorset and Oxfordshire indicate. 88



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Illustration 3.4  Tin-glazed Delft pottery, 17th and 18th ­century

Dairying also had implications for meat supplies. Joan Thirsk has suggested that there was a major advance of commercial dairying from the mid-seventeenth century, and observed a shift in meat preferences at the same time (Thirsk, 2007). Mutton became more fully relegated to the tables of the very poor, beef displacing it as the true basis of the English diet, but veal and pork were actively promoted by food writers and observers, and their position in diet seems to have advanced and diffused in these years. King’s estimates for 1695 suggested the meat market was divided between beef at 42 per cent, mutton 33 per cent, and pork 24. Rising veal output was the clear concomitant of milk production, and was noticeable first in the regional diets of areas such as Lancashire, and of other areas of the north where pig-keeping was less developed. Veal disposed of male calves with potential profit, and offered a means of monetizing some of the whey and other wastes of the dairy. While not wholly an alternative, the pig was also primarily a beast of the dairying districts, fed on the same waste products. Thus many parts of Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Essex, and much of Yorkshire came after 1600 to establish particular reputations for pork and bacon. In eighteenth-century London, pigs were kept by many food-processers, particularly distillers and brewers, and were finished, in contemporary terms ‘blown up’, on the spent mashes. London distillery pigs were conventionally fed to 89

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around 40 stone, probably the London butchers’ measure, and equivalent to 145–150 kg. In eastern England, and perhaps more widely, a new taste for the treatment of pig-meat developed from around 1700, pickling. Rather than being salted and smoked for bacon, fresh pork was pickled. According to William Ellis’s The Country Housewife’s Family Companion (1750), this practice first developed in Kent, and spread into East Anglia and Hertfordshire, perhaps more widely, and was reputed to offer quicker and cheaper preservation, sweeter and longer-lasting meat than traditional salting. It employed brine to purify the pork on slaughter, but then the carcass was rubbed with a mix of salt (sometimes augmented by bay salt, which was superior in salting meat), petre salt (unrefined nitre), saltpetre (refined nitre), and sugar for the final preservation and barrelling. Again, this innovation was one of taste, international trade, exported in the provisioning of ships and to the colonies of the Americas, and offered apparently superior food for the table. The new product, if widely consumed outside the south-east of England, provided superior quality for what was an increasingly discriminating and wider market in the towns, as well as offering high quality meat for harvest workers.

Transport and market change Such changes in food preferences and possibilities were facilitated by transport improvements, in which the British Isles lagged behind the Low Countries and France. It lacked the natural endowments of the great European rivers, but had the potential of a very extensive coastline and many rivers that could be released with the right levels of investment. This came increasingly from the mid-seventeenth century. Some of the superior Dutch naval technology of the fluitschip was captured through the three Dutch wars (1652–4, 1664–7 and 1672–4) and adopted in improved design of coastwise shipping: the prize vessels were wearing out from the 1680s, and needing replacement; new dockyards of the north-east coast – Whitby, Newcastle-uponTyne, Scarborough, South Shields, Stockton, and Sunderland – were better equipped than traditional yards such as Ipswich to adopt the new technology; and by the early eighteenth century their ‘cats’ and ‘pinks’, derivatives of the Dutch prototypes, were major components of the east coast trades in grain, butter and cheese, timber, and coal. Imported luxuries, ‘groceries’ and tobacco, formed return cargoes, and themselves fed into the production of more goods for the market, as in the case of sugar. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the eastern and southern coasts of Britain formed a single integrated market, and the west was developing with major exchange traffic in pig and other products from Ireland, and a major export trade in malt and barley from England. Between 1709 and 1751 the provincial coasting fleet grew by more than 40 per cent in tonnage, and much more in terms of crewing and turn-round capacity. Linked to these were Britain’s rivers. Some had been ‘improved’ before 1640, but the critical period of change came between 1660 and the 1750s, with major improvements on the Thames, the Severn, the Trent, the Wye, the Ouse, and the Wiltshire Avon, undertaken through new investment, first secured under royal letters patent, but increasingly, after 1689, by private Act of Parliament. Over this period, the mileage of navigable inland water expanded from 685, in 1660, to 960 in 1700, 1160 in the 90



British Isles, 1000–1750 | Chapter 3

1720s, and 1400 by 1750 [1102, 1 545, 1 867, and 2 253 km respectively]. They added to carrying capacity for a range of foodstuffs, helping to redress regional and local imbalances, with the coasting trade, and being part of the explanation for the reduced harvest-sensitivity of England’s mortality regime after 1640. Grain for market, especially wheat, barley and malt, cheese, butter and processed packaged foodstuffs were provided with enhanced access to the market by these new river systems, and balancing flows of manures from urban night soil provided inputs to farm improvement. The River Lea was navigable from Ware to London, and still lacked pound locks in 1767, but was the city’s principal source of barley, meal and malt, with 200 000 quarters of malt delivered in 1739 (40 642 tonnes), and carrying little less throughout the 1740s. In the west, the port books of Gloucester and Chepstow, principal ports serving the Severn valley, recorded 3 471 tons of cereal exports coastwise in a ‘sample year’, 1695–1704, with in addition cargoes of cider, hops, wood, cheese, bacon, and barley. In the north, London cheesemongers petitioned to promote the improvement of the River Weaver in 1721, which linked Cheshire salt production with south Lancashire coal and the export trades of Warrington and Liverpool, as they did for the River Don from Doncaster and Sheffield to the Humber (1726–7) where they stressed the value of that river in carrying cheese and hams from Cheshire and surrounding dairying counties to London. River improvement thus added significantly to the integration of the home food market, and paved the way for future canals. The third great change came with the improvement of roads, largely through the turnpike system, which again applied Parliamentary empowerment to raise new loan capitals and make significant improvement in road surfaces. Between the Act of 1695, and the great concentration of new legislation, 1750–70, nearly 15 000 miles of road were turnpiked, 70 per cent of the eventual total. These improvements frequently favoured food traffic: there were local exemptions, such as those freeing horses carrying corn, butter or cheese on the Liverpool to Prescot turnpike in 1726, grain wagons around Bath going to mills (1708), and the pooling of charges for droves of cattle or sheep into units of 20 probably favoured the food trades. The impact was significant: turnpikes raised the costs of transit but reduced travel times and the real costs of transport. They may have reduced real costs of carriage by up to 30 per cent, 1695–1750, and cost fell again relative to both agricultural and industrial prices, 1750–1800. Travel times mattered comparatively little for most agricultural products, even processed foods, but also probably benefited from these improvements. They were opposed by drovers, who were part of turnpike gate destruction in Yorkshire in the 1750s, and later the Scots traffic to England sought to avoid roads and the new charges by ‘keeping constantly to the moors and not using any road at all’ (Bonser, 1970) into Craven. More significant was the transformation of personal travel and potential information flows as time-space distances converged. Manchester was 130 hours from London in 1660, 60 hours by 1760, and around 20 by 1790; Shrewsbury, in the heart of droving districts, 75 hours in 1750 and 23 in 1811, and Norwich 36 in 1750 and 15¾ by 1811. Price information, letters, and traders thus reduced effective distance and enhanced the quality of commercial information in the food trades. From the early eighteenth century, this also assisted the development of provincial newspapers, and the distribution 91

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000

of the London press, both containing commercial information and sharpening the awareness of producers, middlemen and end users. It had already been possible for John Houghton to collect price currents from all over England for publication in his weekly Collection for Improvement of Husbandry and Trade in the 1690s, and by midcentury fifty-five English towns had weekly newspapers, and with perhaps a readership of ten for each copy, on a circulation of up to 1 000, one adult in seven might have been exposed to the provincial newspaper on a weekly basis. With its advertisements for goods and services, for new goods, seeds, and commodities, and its price currents, the provincial newspaper was a powerful force for the integration of the home market. England and Wales had accumulated around 874 market grants by 1695, the bulk established before 1350, and some new creations took place as trade demands altered before 1750, such as Ambleside and Shap in Cumberland, signs of the commercial development of the county. In Scotland, definitional problems of ‘burghs’ complicated the position, but while many baronial burghs failed to make a full transition to meaningful ‘towns’ after 1600, never reaching a population of even 500, there were plenty of new creations of markets and fairs in the years 1660–1750. Trade potential grew, and the legislation of 1672 liberated other towns from the monopoly of royal burghs in international trade, which seems to have inspired a sense of freer trading in which markets flourished, and around 150 new grants were made. The pattern of these was very mixed: some like Langholm (Dumfries) developed on the basis of rich farming hinterland, Thurso in the far north prospered at the expense of longer-established Wick, Musselburgh and Leith secured separate rights at the expense of Edinburgh. With the union of the two crowns in 1603, Scottish cattle exports came to prosper, and new trysts promoted the growth, as with Crieff (1672) and Falkirk (held by prescription after 1700). Ireland too experienced creations of new regulated markets as symbols and catalysts of rural development, again primarily for cattle and livestock produce. New settlement and development of Ireland after 1600 led to the creation of 500 new markets, and many new fairs were also created. In two bursts, in the 1730s and the 1760s, road improvement helped to transform the commerce of many rural districts, in a country where Dublin held a vast primacy as urban and trade centre. Places like Athlone, Clonmel, Ballinasloe, and Banagher were unusually buoyant inland centres of urban growth, based on their markets and fairs. However, the growth of the food trades was related everywhere to the development of agricultural specialization, and the outcome was the development of a more obvious hierarchy of markets. For many, this resulted in growth and specialization, for others the downward drift to predominantly local retail functions, as a shake-out of less attractive centres took place. Thus, Glastonbury (Somerset) declined as a food market with the rise of neighbouring Somerton, and was in 1735 a market that begins at 12 o’clock and ends at noon; Thornbury (Gloucestershire) declined under the powerful competition as a food market from Bristol; and even Lechlade (Gloucs), historically significant as head of navigation on the Thames, seems to have been suffering from the competition of other markets by the middle quarters of the eighteenth century. As noted, many of the optimistic creations in Scotland dropped out of reckoning as food markets in the years before 1750, and some trysts, particularly favoured in location 92



British Isles, 1000–1750 | Chapter 3

for the developing highland trades, gained at the expense of others. In Ireland, the rapidity of population, road and trade growth tended to consolidate the positions of the leading towns: Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Belfast, Kilkenny, Drogheda, and Wexford all gained from British and international trade, but in the context of the rapid commercialization of the eastern parts of the island. In all parts of the British Isles, fairs had traditionally been more the locus of purchases of manufactures, but the years after 1600 saw them advance in significance as livestock trades developed. The trysts were fundamental to Scotland’s rural development, and brought a great deal of English money into the process, the largest developing as the intermediaries between England, the Lowlands, and ultimate Highland producers of stores. The ‘Falkirk’ trysts were perhaps the most noted, such that they retained the name even after they moved to Rough Castle three miles west of the town when the moor was enclosed and ploughed up, and then from 1785 to Larbert nearby, at Stenhousemuir, but still firmly identified as the ‘Falkirk Tryst’. It was almost equidistant between Glasgow and Edinburgh, and lay conveniently for the drove roads from the west that ran north and south of Loch Lomond, and by the end of the century, it had become the single dominant cattle market of lowland Scotland. In highly commercializing south Munster, new fairs were promoted on a great scale: 92 sites in 1735 had risen to 145 by the 1790s, much on the basis of dairy expansion, but also, as traditionally, on the basis of retail supply to the rural districts. In Wales, the fairs also grew on the basis of long-distance cattle trades, with merchants building herds for the ultimate supply of the English meat market by sequential visiting the fairs of north and mid-Wales, the timing of which were adjusted to meet market needs. In England, the great fairs seem to have prospered during the eighteenth century, when the weekly market had a mixed experience, but cattle and sheep traffic came to concentrate upon a limited number, located on the favoured drove routes: Masham (Yorkshire, NR) was famed for its sheep fairs; Brough, Carlisle and Stagshaw Bank in the north; Adwalton, Appletreewick, Boroughbridge, and Malham in Yorkshire; St Faith’s near Norwich; and a ring of fairs around London, of which the most notable was Barnet. Just as the lesser markets were coming to serve only petty trades, perhaps as many had always done, so fairs divided between those serving pleasure and distraction, and the great livestock markets that played such a significant role in the meat trade up to the end of the nineteenth century.

International markets The British Isles had long engaged in the international trades in hides, wool, and foodstuffs, but developed these to greater intensity in the century after 1650 than before. Earnings from overseas sales helped to finance domestic agricultural improvement by raising the commercial intensity of farming; to secure the food supplies of new colonial populations; and to further enhance the processes of regional specialization that were the sources of long-term growth. For most of the first half of the eighteenth century, England and Wales exported substantial quantities of grain: up to the 1730s barley and malt to the Netherlands and to Ireland; wheat to the Mediterranean countries 93

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000

and Spain; and meal and wheat to the British colonies in the Americas and, through Lisbon and Oporto, to the Portuguese colony of Brazil. Salted and pickled meats, cheese, and butter were shipped across the Atlantic from England and Scotland, as well as applied to the provisioning of shipping, and much of the west of Britain gained from this new development on the western side of the island. Ireland had been excluded from livestock trades with England by legislation in 1665 and 1667, but dealt extensively in salted beef and pickled butter up to the middle of the eighteenth century, as exemplified by the trade of Cork, with pig-meat, mostly bacon rising in export traffic from the beginning of the century, ‘invisible’ quantities of both meats entering the British military victualling trades, and many direct sales to the passing French trade, both for the provisioning of ships and more significantly the supply of their sugar colonies in St Domingue and elsewhere in the Caribbean. By the 1760s, there were several different qualities of Irish salt beef being exported from Cork, with ‘French beef ’, appropriate for slave consumption, ‘cargo beef ’ of ‘common’ and ‘best’ qualities and ‘mess beef ’, ‘common’ and ‘planters’ being produced. All pointed to the richness of the retained food supply of the islands before 1800, the potential reserve for home consumption in time of greater need, and the source of investment into market-oriented farming.

Conclusion The net impact of these changes over the years to around 1780 was to enhance the specialization of locality and region in England. The adoption of the classic ‘improvement’ of Parliamentary enclosure in the English midlands from mid-century was principally to permit the readjustment of output towards meat and dairy production, and the abandonment of large-scale cereal farming: midland bread was increasingly supplied from specialist regions, such as East Anglia. In Wales, Scotland and Ireland, these changes permitted the intensive monetization and marketization of predominantly livestock zones, raising farm incomes and landlords’ rents. The Scottish agricultural transformation that took place largely after 1750 was in part the consequence of these extensive linkages. They supplied their local growing towns, notably Glasgow and the industrializing west of Scotland, Dublin and Belfast, and the English market. Overall, these shifts in the allocation of farming resources were more than sufficient to feed the most rapidly growing populations of Europe, to permit significant export trades, and to gain farm productivity from these alterations in land use. English pride by mid-century in the home diet of beer, beef and wheaten bread, along with the wearing of leather boots and shoes, signified a high point in the material culture of the Early Modern Period. While aimed as propaganda at the antithetical world of France – black bread, frogs, vinegary wines, and clogs – it represented a genuine statement of betterment in the provisions of the common people and the performance of farming.

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Bibliography Bennett, J. M. (1996) Ale, beer, and brewsters in England. Women’s work in a changing world, 1300–1600, Oxford. Beresford, M. W. (1988) New towns of the Middle Ages. Town plantation in England, Wales and Gascony, 2nd ed., Gloucester. Bonser, K. J. (1970) The drovers: who they were and how they went. An epic of the English countryside, London. Boserup, E. (2005, new ed.) The conditions of agricultural growth. The economics of agrarian change under population pressure, New Brunswick and New Jersey. Britnell, R. H. (2004) Britain and Ireland 1050–1530. Economy and society, Oxford. Campbell, B. M. S. et al. (1993) A medieval capital and its grain supply. Agrarian production and distribution in the London region c. 1300, Historical geography Research Series, 30, Cheltenham. Campbell, B. M. S. (2008) ‘Benchmarking medieval economic development: England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, c. 1290’, Economic History Review, 61, pp. 896–948. Chartres, J. A. and Hey, D. (eds) (1990) English rural society, 1500–1800. Essays in ­honour of Joan Thirsk, Cambridge. Chartres, J. A. (2009) ‘Producers, crops and markets, 1600–1800’, in J. Broad (ed.), A common agricultural heritage? Revising French and British rural divergence, Agricultural History Review, Supplement series, pp. 138–154. Clark, P. (2000) The Cambridge urban history of Britain, II, 1540–1840, Cambridge. Cosgrove, A. (ed.) (1987) A new history of Ireland, II, Medieval Ireland 1169–1534, Oxford. Devine, T. M. (1994) The transformation of rural Scotland. Social change and the agrarian economy, 1660–1815, Edinburgh. Dickson, D. (2005) Old world colony. Cork and South Munster 1630–1830, Cork. Dyer, A. D. (1973) The city of Worcester in the sixteenth century, Leicester. Dyer, C. (1989) Standards of living in the Later Middle Ages. Social change in England c. 1200–1520, Cambridge. Dyer, C. (2005) Making a living in the Middle Ages. The people of Britain 850–1520, New Haven. Finberg, H. P. R. (ed.) (1972) The agrarian history of England and Wales, I, part ii, AD 43–1042, Cambridge. Haldane, A. R. B. (1997) The drove roads of Scotland, Edinburgh. Hallam, H E (1981) Rural England 1066–1348, Glasgow. Hallam, H. E., (ed.) (1988) The agrarian history of England and Wales, II, 1042–1350, Cambridge. Hoskins, W. G. (1965) Provincial England. Essays in social and economic history, London. Houston, R. A. (1992) The population history of Britain and Ireland 1550–1750, Cambridge. King, G. (1973) ‘“The LCC Burns Journal”, a Manuscript Notebook Containing Workings for Several projected Works’, in P. Laslett (ed.), The earliest classics, Farnborough.

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Langdon, J. (1984) ‘Horse hauling: a revolution in vehicle transport in twelfth- and ­thirteenth- century England?’, Past & Present, 103, pp. 37–66. Lennard, R. V. (1959) Rural England, 1086–1135: a study of social and agrarian ­conditions, Oxford. Miller, E. (ed.) (1991) The agrarian history of England and Wales, III, 1348–1500, Cambridge. Moody, T. W. and Vaughan, W. E. (1986) A new history of Ireland, IV, Eighteenth-century Ireland 1691–1800, Oxford. Moody, T. W., Martin, F. X. and Byrne, F. J. (1976) A new history of Ireland, III, Early Modern Ireland, 1534–1691, Oxford. Moore-Colyer, R. (2006) Welsh cattle drovers. Agriculture and the Welsh cattle trade before and during the nineteenth century, 2nd ed., Ashbourne. Oram, R. (2011) Domination and lordship: Scotland 1070–1230, Edinburgh. Overton, M. (1996) Agricultural revolution in England. The transformation of the agrarian economy 1500–1850, Cambridge. Palliser, D. M. (ed.) (2000) The Cambridge urban history of Britain, I, 600–1540, Cambridge. Pirenne, H (1939) Les villes et les institutions urbaines, Paris and Brussels. Thick, M. (1998) The neat house gardens. Early market gardening around London, Totnes. Thirsk, J. (ed.) (1967) The agrarian history of England and Wales¸ IV, 1500–1640, Cambridge. Thirsk, J.(ed.) (1984–85) The agrarian history of England and Wales, V, 1640–1750, 2 vols., Cambridge. Thirsk, J. (2007) Food in Early Modern England. Phases, fads, fashions 1500–1760, London. Vries, J. de (1984) European urbanization 1500–1800, London. Vries, J de (2008) The industrious revolution. Consumer behavior and the household economy, 1650 to the present, New York. Willan, T. S. (1964) River navigation in England 1600–1750, London. Willan, T. S. (1967) The English coasting trade 1600–1750, Manchester. Wrigley, E. A. (1987) People, cities and wealth. The transformation of traditional ­society, Oxford.

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Illustration 4.1  A girl going to market, c. 1800, engraving after Thomas Barker of Bath. Print made by Thomas Gaugain, published by Gaetano Testolini

4 British Isles, 1750–2000 John Chartres Between 1750 and 2000, the British Isles displayed more dramatic changes in food supply systems, tastes, and distribution than most of its north European neighbours. Up to the 1860s, they showed more rapid population growth than any of the other countries in the area, and from the 1770s population was growing at historically unprecedented rates. In this context Thomas Malthus in 1798 first emphasized the threat to subsistence being posed by the unrestrained growth of population, but in the British Isles as a whole economic growth largely rebutted threats of starvation. Ireland certainly experienced subsistence pressures from the 1820s, and famine with the potato blight from 1845, which also affected highland Scotland, but, thereafter, the British Isles gained from transport improvements and then internationalization of supply. Intensive urbanization, particularly in England, increasingly separated the consumer from the producers of food, and by the 1870s, larger middlemen had entered the wholesale trades, and large-scale retail chains were emerging. By 1900, the islands were heavily dependent upon imported supplies, and vulnerable in both world wars, although Ireland had intensified its position as a supplier of dairy and other pastoral produce to Britain. From the late 1940s, and especially after the final ending of food rationing in 1954, food supply systems became still more large-scale, with the development of supermarkets, and the later twentieth century saw them move to dominance in food systems, commanding prices offered to farmers, and removing public awareness of provenance in their foods. By the 1990s, the islands’ food had become more diverse, less seasonal and still more international, and despite the rise of the organic and ‘real food’ movements, and more sophisticated food culture, the great majority of food supplies remained dominated by the big five retail chains.

4.1 1750–1870 After 1750, the British Isles and its food systems entered previously unknown territory. Rates of population growth, urbanization, and aggregate output of foods expanded to levels unimaginable before 1700, and these led to radical changes in domestic trade, farm output, and distribution systems. Industrialization became heavily dependent upon mineral fuel systems and supplies, and after 1820, manufacturing industries became increasingly urban in location, as the industrial revolution’s maturing phases led to the concentration of activities based on coal and steam, rather than the earlier phases of dispersed water-power based production. This process came increasingly to separate the population at large from direct contact with food producers and small-scale producer-retailers, and to develop links with new retail systems, from new markets to hawkers and to supplies processed by middlemen and other specialists. However, by 1870, the great majority of food supplies remained those of ‘home’ production, with 99

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000

map 4 British Isles, 1750–2000

Present state boundaries Rivers

0

50

100 km

Aberdeen

S c o t l a n d

Glasgow Edinburgh

N O R T H Dumfries Belfast

Carlisle

Newcastle

UNITED KINGDOM

IRELAND Dublin

YORKSHIRE

LANCASHIRE

Leeds

Halifax Liverpool

Hull

Manchester Sheffield

E n g l a n d MIDLANDS Birmingham

W a l e s

NORFOLK

Worcester Evesham

Swansea

Merthyr Tydfil

GLOUCESTERSHIRE

SUFFOLK Oxford

Cardiff

ESSEX

Bristol

SOMERSET

London

WILTSHIRE Basingstoke

DORSET Plymouth

HAMPSHIRE Portsmouth

C H A N N E L

100

S E A



British Isles, 1750–2000 | Chapter 4

Table 4.1 Numbers of large towns and urban share of total population, British Isles and Low Countries, 1750–1890 1750 >10 000

1800 >10 000

1850 >10 000

1870 >10 000

1890 > 20 000

No

%

No

%

No

%

No

%

No

%

England & Wales

21

16.7

44

20.3

148

40.8

356

61.9

185

53.7

Scotland

5

 9.2

8

17.3

18

32.0

 37

50.3

17

42.7

Ireland

3

 5.0

8

 7.0

14

10.2

 18

17.6

8

15.0

33

50.1

39

47.7

54

50.0

 95

67.9

40

55.1

Low Countries

Source: de Vries (2007), European urbanization 1500–1800, pp. 33, 39, 45–46.

imported goods still making modest contributions to the total, and the spatial footprint of great towns still largely confined to patterns of the past. Before 1870, then, the massive impact of urbanization was magnified in Britain by being concentrated into the limited spatial zones of historic towns, with the added pressures of intensified urban residence and the relocation of industry.

The impact of urbanization Applying the estimates of de Vries, as in earlier discussions, Britain advanced to become by far Europe’s most urbanized country by the mid-nineteenth century, and retained this position. (de Vries, 1984). The summary figures of table 4.1 above indicate the extent of advance between 1750 and 1890, by share of population in towns of 10 000 or more, with estimated numbers compared with a Low Countries benchmark. For England, this last observation coincided with a particularly fast rate of rural depopulation, and relative shifts to the towns continued. In Scotland, industrial and urban growth had been concentrated very strongly into the years after 1750, and involved the intensification of urban growth in the central belt and the east, with the depopulation of the highlands and islands, a pattern marked on a smaller scale in Ireland. Wales was traditionally subsumed into a single category with England in all summary statistics, but was probably even less urbanized than Ireland: its few large towns were all in the south, with only Swansea exceeding 10 000 before 1801, and only Swansea, Cardiff, Newport, Merthyr Tydfil, and Carmarthen reaching this threshold by 1841: it was a two-tier urban system, with very few larger towns, themselves small by overall British standards, and a larger number of modest market towns and mining or industrial villages in a very rural country. Its food systems therefore resembled those of much of highland Scotland and the west of Ireland, characterized by the continuing 101

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interaction of small-scale producers and consumers through traditional market systems. Despite all these developments it was still possible to represent the United Kingdom in 1911 as ‘an empty country dotted with small crowded spots called towns’ (Leo Chiozza Money, cited by Yelling in Daunton, 2000: 468). In general, urbanization remained characterized by intensification of land use, not yet a sprawl.

The process of transport change Transport changes from the middle of the eighteenth century had facilitated this urban growth, and concentrated industry, services, employment, and housing in limited space (based largely upon Mingay, 1989; Collins, 2000; Daunton, 2000; Scola, 1992; Bagwell, 1974). River navigation had supported much town development and supply systems from the later seventeenth century, but by the 1740s and 1750s canals and canal projects supplemented, linked, and further improved inland navigation. In north-west England, the canal systems promoted by the Duke of Bridgewater linked the coalfields of south Lancashire with growing Manchester, and in the Sankey Brook navigation formed part of the route of the later Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Some parts of the country gained greatly from the new transport systems, above all Birmingham, the major industrial centre furthest from good navigable water in 1750, but the canal system was relatively slow to be completed as a unifying trunk transport system: the Leeds and Liverpool Canal was open for almost half of its eventual length by 1777 (begun in 1770), but work was suspended until 1790, and not completed until 1816. Even then, the canal was much more important to the development of industry and of towns than specifically to agriculture or food supply. There was certainly additional gain from the improved connection of the arable East Riding of Yorkshire to the industrial West Riding; the financially weak Basingstoke Canal made significant contribution to the agricultural improvement of Hampshire; and canals certainly carried grain, lime, stone, and manures by the completion of the system around 1830, but above all it was coal that formed their primary traffic, with heavy manufactures such as iron goods, pottery, and a limited segment of rapid parcels trade on ‘flyboats’. Manchester certainly depended upon the Bridgewater Canal and the Mersey & Irwell navigation for much of its potato and vegetable supply from the 1780s onward, but even in the 1840s was said still to receive at least half of its supplies by cart, and the canals eased systems of supply without transforming them. Similar gains were made in the west midlands, where the linkage of rivers and canals eased access to the new markets in industrializing towns for specialist growers in Worcestershire and others trading through Worcester market: in 1791 over 2 094 tonnes of fruit was sent to the north by water from Worcester, the equivalent of 31 410 ‘horse pots’, the local trading measure, and the average of the three previous years was in excess of 1 500 tonnes. The town handled around 1 000 horse pots of fruit each week for the last five months of the calendar year. Canals thus assisted the development of large towns, and of urban industries, many of which were agricultural processors, but were of themselves less significant in the nineteenth-century food system than might at first appear. 102



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It was therefore significant that road carrying capacity improved strikingly between the 1770s and the 1830s. The turnpike road system of repair, construction and maintenance that had made such improvement to trunk routes and the networks of roads around major conurbations by the 1770s spread and intensified its gains to more local networks over the next sixty years. In so doing it intensified the gains in reliability, ease of connection, and costs of transporting food from farm to market, and upward from the towns at the lower rungs of the commercial system. In the Vale of Evesham (Worcestershire), one of England’s most intensive fruit and garden zones, from 1792 local growers held a monthly Road Club, to promote improvement of their parish roads, the bottom links of the system. The central government added initiatives in the 1790s to develop improved road mileage in highland Scotland, and to promote the strategic route to Ireland through north Wales, although it is difficult to estimate route loadings of foodstuffs and other agricultural goods. Manchester’s very rapid population growth in the early nineteenth century led to vast increases in the demand for potatoes, drawn heavily from the specialist growing districts of south-west Lancashire and Cheshire, and supplies entered the town by both canal and road. By the early 1840s, annual consumption was estimated to be over 40 000 tonnes in the city, with up to 50 000 entering for local consumption and redistribution by boat and cart. Smaller towns, such as Skipton (Yorkshire, WR), became increasingly served by farmers’ carts, with 200 per week coming to market in the early 1820s, and in the 1790s, carts carrying 10 000 eggs a load were entering the Manchester market from Kendal and Penrith, up to 100 km distant, packed in straw in casks, with very little breakage. In much of midland England, carting remained the economic solution for foodstuffs trades, as it had in the later middle ages, and local and regional distribution of grain, flour and meal used carts and waggons, to carry both to urban markets and to reach rivers such as the Nene which carried to more distant places. The stronger market orientation of farmers in the period appears to have been marked by their increased investment in horses and vehicles. Unfortunately, English probate records diminish rapidly in the second quarter of the eighteenth century, making it hard to use these data for the assessment of farm transport, but Stephen Porter demonstrated a clear link between rising farm size and waggons in Huntingdonshire, with between 50 and 67 per cent of farmers owning wagons by the decade 1730–49 (Porter, 1982). Strategic surveys for war provided comparative evidence for Buckinghamshire in 1798, when there was a waggon for every 7.5 households, a cart for every 4, and a horse for every 1.7. Numbers of wheelwrights and smiths grew accordingly, rising significantly in number and diffusion to the 1850s, deepening the infrastructure of local transport systems. By the 1790s, the bulk of scheduled carrier services was local, with 70 per cent serving the area within 30 km of the town, and this growth was accompanied by falling real prices. Detailed estimates for the costs of local and farmer carriage are not available, but the real price of scheduled road carriage may have halved between 1770 and 1830: we can thus assume falling costs of transport of foodstuffs to and between towns, and a great increase in accessibility. By 1804, with the opening of the Surrey Iron Railway, running from Croydon to Wandsworth through rich farmlands, these 103

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transport improvements were spreading to the development of horse-drawn public tramways, although most remained primarily private mineral lines. Coastal shipping also attained greater significance in food supply systems up to the 1840s, and foreshadowed the invasion of the droving trades that was to result from railway expansion after 1870. The introduction of steam coasters from around 1820 improved the potential usage for farmers: by 1821 the UK had 188 steamships in service, in all over 20 000 tonnes and these numbers rose rapidly to 639 (218 000 tonnes) by 1853. Their contributions were particularly important to the Irish Sea trades, in which Ireland shipped large quantities of corn and meal to Britain: Irish shipments rose from an average 228 000 tonnes, 1820–24, to over 390 000 through the 1830s. Steamships also altered the structure of livestock farming in Scotland, effectively bringing Aberdeenshire, Kincardine, and Wigtownshire into the inner zones of the von Thünen market system. By the mid-1830s, 10 000 sheep and 7 000 cattle were shipped south to Edinburgh and London as fatstock, and a similar traffic developed on the west coast between Annan and Dumfries and Liverpool. These new systems improved the cutting quality of meat by comparison with that from the droves, and in offering farmers a speedier return on sales encouraged further investment in such distant trades. While the droves continued, and steamship traffic took only a small premium part of the market before 1850, the period showed the potential for traditional grazing areas to develop markets in fresh meat on the hoof. The railway developed rapidly from the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester line in 1830, and the basic trunk system was complete by 1865. Although some of the impact on farming and food systems came later, there were significant changes before 1870. Part of the initial impact was the invasion of local monopoly, raising access to sources of farm inputs, such as guano, superphosphates and sulphate of ammonia, and lowering general transport costs. In the medium term, the ending of customary or regulated carriage rates may have created new railway territories, where goods rates determined market structure. Liverpool and Hull correspondingly felt by the 1870s that their natural advantages had been eroded. Long-distance droving was already diminished by the 1850s, with railheads emerging as the assembling markets for livestock, from which animals could be despatched to the consuming centres: in Scotland, Lairg (Sutherland), Lockerbie (Dumfries) and Lanark (Lanarkshire) played this role. Corresponding changes were also produced in consuming centres, and the larger towns sustained major wholesale markets. Smithfield, London’s traditional open market for livestock, closed in 1855, and the livestock trade moved out to Islington; the new Smithfield (1868) was a wholesale meat market; east and west of the capital Romford (Essex) and Southall (Middlesex) became established as great livestock markets through the new railway systems; and separate pig stations were constructed in Liverpool and at Charles Street, Manchester, near Liverpool Road Station in the 1840s, making the Liverpool & Manchester by far the most significant line for the Irish pig trade in Britain. Though initially seasonal in character, the railway trade began the large-scale supply of dead meat to London, and by 1853, over 36 000 tonnes of ‘railway meat’, much Scottish beef, was delivered to London’s Newgate and Leadenhall markets. Livestock entered London markets on the railway in 1853 in very 104



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large amounts: 57 per cent of over 300 000 cattle entered by train, against 22 per cent by sea and 21 by droves; 57 per cent of 1 631 million sheep came by rail, with 28 per cent by drove; and 47 per cent of 127 852 pigs were carried to London by rail, with 38 per cent driven; veal calves, by contrast, the smallest of the meat trades at 101 776 beasts, were largely driven (61 per cent), or entered by sea (25 per cent) (Perren, in Collins, 2000, II). Much of this meat came on the Great Northern Railway, which was also very significant in vegetable traffic. The company established potato warehousing on its King’s Cross site from 1852, and the original train shed replaced by the station served as such a warehouse; other potato warehouses were located on the same site, and with the Metropolitan Cattle Market to its north, in Copenhagen Fields, it came to form a great wedge of food marketing to the north of the established city. Similar developments were associated with the Great Eastern Railway, with its conversion of the original Bishopsgate terminus into its principal goods station in 1874. The pattern was replicated in Manchester, despite the persistence of road carriage, with the Oldham Road Goods Station of the Lancashire & Yorkshire from 1849 acting as a major potato market for supplies from both Yorkshire and from the west, the great vegetable-growing zone around Ormskirk. From 1853 the London Road Station of the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway also served as a potato market, the railway company compounding with the corporation in both cases for losses in revenue from its established markets. Rail thus altered structures and systems from the beginning, even if its principal contributions came first in passenger traffic, and greater changes in the localities were to follow after 1870, with the final phase of development of the UK system.

Changing supply These changes in transport and distribution helped the continuing cause of output growth and change. Britain changed much of its dietary preference in the period, with the richer urban consumer adopting increasingly richer diets, contrasting with the continuing plain but probably healthier fare of the rural districts (Collins, 2000, VII). New preferences led above all to the growing of wheat on newly cultivated lands, and at the expense of other cereals. Acreage of wheat rose by 50 per cent, 1801–54, and barley by 80 per cent, with peas and beans roughly stable, and turnips and rape rising threefold, all displacing oats, which fell to 60 per cent of their 1801 level. New conversion and enclosures were significant elements in the changes, symbolized by the ‘conquest’ of the Yorkshire Wolds, and their move from sheep granges into very productive arable land. In all, such changes in cultivation explained how Britain was able largely to sustain its own bread supply, with imports from eastern Ireland, up to the 1870s, using a system of what was called ‘high farming’, food production with high inputs and output at modest unit rates of profit. Turnips, supported by the new extraneous fertilisers, sustained the fertility of arable lands, and as markets for tallow and wool diminished after 1780, sheep flocks became refocused onto the market for meat. The result was the development of new crosses from traditional regional and local breeds, 105

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symbolized by the development of the Southdown, the Dorset and Hampshire down types, which produced leaner mutton, and the potential for markets in lamb, in effect offering increased supplies of quality meat to potential urban consumers. Breeding from Southdown and other rams of desirable qualities allowed farmers to raise the calibre of their flocks for the new market conditions, at costs well below those of pedigree stock, and to supply first crosses as lambs for market. The intensification of dairying, in Ireland, and several parts of England, like Somerset and Wiltshire, encouraged expansion of pig production for the market in addition to butter and cheese with evident supply-side impact upon particular food markets: Irish suppliers were held to have Liverpool and Manchester pretty much to themselves for pigs and cattle, and before 1845 may have held three-quarters of the Manchester market.

Food processing and consumer preferences These changes in logistics and supply conditions at farm level were magnified by wider and greater changes in food technologies, processing systems, and tastes. From 1700, the relative shares of beer output for the common brewers and the brewing victuallers are defined by figures from the Excise Tax (see Mathias, 1959; Gourvish and Wilson, 1994). Between 1700 and the 1750s, brewers were responsible for roughly 45 per cent of strong beer, and 50 per cent of small beer production, the weaker, often second-brewed table beers for general household usage; at the end of the century, for the two years 1790–1, their share had risen to 60 and 54 per cent, and in the early 1820s, 64 and 68 per cent. This had been achieved largely at the expense of the traditional brewing victualler. The steady rise in the proportion of beer produced by the commercial breweries, largely in towns, did not continue to advance, and, measured by the available data on the relative shares of malt consumed, it remained at about 60 per cent in the early 1860s. New beer house keepers entered the trade after 1830, taking a significant share of the brewing trade, and the general picture for England and Wales was also of robust survival for many brewing publicans. However, these overall patterns disguised very real differences: Scotland had already become dominated by the commercial brewery by 1830, which retained a share of around 90 per cent throughout the rest of the century; and Ireland too differed with its dispersed rural populations of the north and west offering a relatively limited general market for the brewer, in the face of entrenched spirit drinking. Commercial brewing in Ireland developed primarily in the towns of the south and east in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with a significant market share for imports, which rose from 3.2 per cent of the market, 1760–4, to peak at 17.4 per cent in 1790–4, before disappearing in the early nineteenth century. Regional patterns in England too were obscured by these averages. In London, the development of porter, the new dark and strong beer, after 1722, had established the basis for the industrial revolution in brewing, and with its requirements for maturation before sale came a combination of processes that led to major organizational change in the metropolitan beer market. Porter’s qualities required longer keeping, and greater capital resources for the brewer, but its strength and stability also opened the potential 106



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of wider markets, and for the consumer perhaps the first standardized product. In Dublin, Guinness developed its porter traffic to England after 1815, and gradually drove London porter out of the Lancashire trade, and by 1840 half of Guinness’s annual output of more than 80 000 barrels [around 133 000 hl] was being sold in England. London’s brewers remained roughly stable in numbers from the 160–190 in 1684–1708, 140–160 in 1766–94, before beginning to drop during the war, and falling to below 100 in the late 1820s. Within the strong beer producers, however, the porter brewers were attaining the scale of giants by the middle of the eighteenth century, and had secured this dominance by its end: the leading twelve porter breweries produced 47.1 per cent of all strong beer by 1760, 77.1 per cent by 1787, and 85 per cent by 1830. The combination of these changes in the economics of beer production in the capital, and the enhanced asset value of public house licences as local government tightened regulation, provided the incentive for greater brewery controls of retailing, and loan or ownership ties grew rapidly in late eighteenth-century London: by 1800–10, the London tie of large brewers was said to cover 80 per cent of the market, although the largest porter brewers had generally reduced their share to the mid 60 per cent range. For the consumer, this meant restricted choice, but perhaps greater quality of accommodation, and the London brewery trade had foreshadowed the patterns that were to predominate in England after 1870. Before 1830, perhaps the only other locality to attain wider markets on the basis of a distinctive produce was the town of Burton on Trent, where an international reputation for bright, strong pale ales had been established by the middle of the eighteenth century, and whose products could secure markets in London and the Baltic countries, using river transport, and after 1793, still more distant markets in British India, where the Burton ‘IPA’ (India Pale Ale) became a major export good to the expatriate community. However, despite its fame throughout England before 1800, Burton was still a brewing centre of modest scale in 1831, with only 9 breweries averaging 5 550 barrels per annum in output [9 213 hl], and its real growth came after 1840, when it benefited from the railway, and from the generalized adoption of glass drinking vessels, which maximized its brightness and clarity: by 1851, it had 17 breweries, averaging 17 650 barrels [29 299 hl], and by 1868, 26 producing an average of 67 510 barrels [112 067 hl]. Beers thus showed how new techniques, new tastes, and advancing distribution networks could transform food systems. The success of canned meat came later in the century. Also milk, butter and cheese experienced more changes after the 1870s than before, but the gradual intensification of regional specialization after 1750 had led to some concentration of production (Collins, 2000; Ó Gráda, 1977). Urban supplies of fresh milk came from local farms to Manchester and Sheffield, and in many cities depended upon urban dairies, into which rural cows were rotated. By the early nineteenth century there was consistent effort to continue milking into and through the winter in urban dairies, with, it is assumed, limited yields and high fodder costs. The gradual diffusion of the dairy shorthorn as the preferred milk cow favoured the specialist against the cottage cowkeeper. Somerset, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, and Dorset were all counties in which dairying began to shift from the farm to urban creameries between 1750 and 1850, with some growth in 107

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000

Illustration 4.2  ‘Royal Wilts’, 8 January 1908, advertisement for the Wiltshire Bacon Curing ­Company Ltd. of Chippenham

the scale of business, and benefits from the dependent activities, notably pigkeeping, which gained from access to whey and other waste produce. The region became known for the production of bacon, clearly founded upon the local dairies, but also developed on the Irish pig trade, which brought droves through the area from landings in western ports. The Harris family of butchers in Calne engaged in the trade, and around 1840 developed the new Wiltshire Cure for bacon, which produced a more consistent brine cure more quickly and economically than artisan products, and suited the product to the London and other distant urban markets.

Milling and baking As noted earlier, despite unprecedented growth in population, the British Isles remained largely self-sufficient in cereals until later in the eighteenth century, although both Scotland and Ireland experienced famines respectively in 1772–3, 1782–3, 1795–6, and 1799–1800, and 1740–1, 1747–8, 1755, 1766, 1800–1, and 1817–19. England and Wales were, on average, 85 per cent self-sufficient in wheat and flour before 1850, after which imports assumed greater significance, with rapid increases in the 1870s. However, even before this shift, there had been changes in the location and structure of milling, and in the ways in which flours were consumed (Tann and Perren, in Mingay, 1989). 108



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Until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, British flours were almost universally stone-ground, and kept poorly, with the consequence that mills were typically small in scale, and located close to the main centres of consumption, applying a short lead time of no more than a fortnight to delivery. Only London really stretched its sources of supply to a 30-mile radius, but there in the later eighteenth century the productivity of mills was improved, and new mills of ‘industrial scale’ began to appear. Union Mills in Birmingham (1796) was the first to adopt the lineshaft drive, thus permitting the driving of millstones in line, with greater economy of floor space and the introduction of gradual reduction of grains through high grinding techniques. Technical improvement to water wheels came though the adoption of iron frames and new control mechanisms, and after 1800 steam mills became more common, overcoming the problems of discontinuity in operation that had handicapped the watermill. Up to the 1820s, engine manufacturers received more enquiries than orders, although 90 steam mills opened, 1801–22, 19 of them supplementing wind or water units, the most remarkable in scale and capacity being the great Boulton & Watt Albion Mills in London (1786), destroyed by fire in 1791, which had two 50-hp engines. By the 1830s, half the flour supply of some towns came from steam-powered mills: Newcastle had 8 steam mills in 1822, producing less than half of the town’s supplies; 10 steam mills built in Birmingham by 1827 provided 59 per cent of needs; and 17 steam mills in and around Leeds by 1830 had a total of 282 hp, and met the needs of 96 per cent of the population. Many were erected by newcomers to milling – corndealers, distillers, maltsters and so on – perhaps more ready to adopt the new technologies, but by 1850 steam had not displaced the larger and more efficient urban watermills, nor the many rural flourmillers. Limitations of coal supply, the restrictions of Boulton & Watt patents, the explosion of Albion Mills, and the more attractive profit levels from other industrial applications of steam depressed the rate of adoption. By 1850, then, the industrial revolution in corn milling was principally confined to London and the larger towns of England’s industrial midlands and north, but with expansion in the major seaports foreshadowing future patterns of development. Baking of bread for these increased populations was again largely unaltered, supply being produced by the multiplication of urban bakers, but changes in taste, the plentiful supply of soft wheat flours, and the falling price of imported cane sugars led to significant change in the nature and output of biscuits. Some gains in productivity had been made from the late eighteenth century at Plymouth, Portsmouth and Deptford supplying ships biscuits to the navy, and Rennie and Grant developed mechanized mixing, rolling and cutting at Portsmouth in 1833. At roughly the same time, perhaps using transferred technologies, the ‘fancy biscuit’ expanded, and met urban consumer tastes for what were perhaps the first convenience foods. Carr’s of Carlisle developed automated cutting, and Palmer of Reading (Huntley & Palmer from 1841) used more effective machinery to produce a much greater variety of biscuit, using butter, eggs, milk, and flavourings from caraway and cinnamon to lemon and orange-flower waters, continuous baking in web-fed rotating ovens by the early 1850s, and named brands. By the 1860s, Huntley & Palmer were producing around 120 varieties of biscuit. Changing dining habits continued the expansion from the later eighteenth century 109

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of time and space for tea, and the biscuit increasingly accompanied the afternoon tea of the middle classes. Following the model of biscuit manufacture, other manufactured and branded foods were emerging, although the scale remained small until the years after 1870. The Birmingham chemist, Alfred Bird, produced his first ‘real custard without eggs’ before 1850, and in the devising of a coloured maize-flour product foreshadowed much of the later patterns of the British diet. In 1843 he also devised ‘Bird’s Fermenting Powder’, the modern baking powder, as a substitute for yeast, and while originally aimed at the military field kitchen or naval galley, it proved helpful to the development of home and commercial production of biscuits, bread, and light cakes.

Food preservation: canning From 1813, the London firm of Hall and Donkin were established canners of meat, again primarily for military and naval victualling; by 1840, several companies were supplying the armed forces with canned meats, poultry, fish, vegetables, soup, milk, cream, and desserts, but comparatively little crossover to civilian consumption had as yet taken place (Perren, in Collins, 2000, II; Müller, 1991). Part of the reason lay in some of the early scandals of the canned meat business, and widespread consumer panic about food quality around 1860. The firm of Goldner was supplying the British market with meat canned in Galatz (Romania) from cheap supplies of Moldavian cattle from the mid-1840s, but faulty canning techniques led to some cans containing putrescent meat in 1846, and from 1852 the Admiralty took canning in-house, at the Royal Victualling Yard at Deptford. Canning did develop more widely, including the civilian sales from Hall and Donkin, but the large size of individual tins [typically 9 – 32 lbs, 4–14 kg], the uncertain quality of tinplates, the challenges of opening cans at home, doubts about the quality of contents, and irregular patterns of production precluded the entry of such processed goods into the mass market.

New markets and retail structures These changes were accompanied by altered institutional arrangements. The longerterm changes in food trades had already produced stress in the established regulated market systems of the early eighteenth century. Towns often responded by the rebuilding of the market house in the traditional open markets, and by improvement and tidying up of market provision, sometimes indicated by the designation of specialized areas for specific trades. Although many had been observable in the later middle ages, specific butter crosses, re-designation of the shambles [meat markets], and the clarification of the rules for open market trading seem to have accompanied the rebuilding of market crosses and houses after 1700. However these challenges seem to have faced more insistent challenges in many towns after 1750, and, combined with the extensification of networks of supply, transport improvement, and very rapid urban growth, the period 1750–1830 saw a great deal of change, above all in the creation of new markets, often relocated to deal with 110



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Illustration 4.3  Design of the covered retail market of Weymouth, 1811–1877, pen and brown ink with watercolour and bodycolour on paper

these enhanced volumes of business. Many were conceived in the traditional roles of the open market, where regulated trade took place between producer and consumer, governed by implicit ‘policies of plenty’ and the ‘just price’. That the reality had shifted far from this conception was revealed in the rhetoric of popular protest over food in these open market places, where, as E. P. Thompson showed, there was substantial evidence, 1750–1840, of the moral economy of the crowd being applied as a critique of economic changes, corn for example being ritualistically seized and retailed by the crowd at what was felt to be the proper price (Thompson, 1971). New markets to improve upon the old, or to replace the old at new sites grew in number after 1750 (Phillips, 1992; Grady, 1989). Oxford opened a covered market in 1774 and Grady’s comprehensive survey of Yorkshire identified the building of six new market places, 1800–40 in the West Riding, such as those at Rotherham and Halifax, and there were 341 Market Improvement Acts passed for Britain, 1800–70, mostly covering English centres. At Halifax, part of the motivation was to control order and unregulated trade, especially from the town’s butchers. In addition to 111

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improved sites or facilities, there was also significant qualitative improvement: in many of the larger towns, the new retail markets were covered, and reorganized to attract the retail business. Liverpool’s new covered market opened in 1822, at a cost of £35 000, with 62 shops and offices, and 1 600 stalls and tables, arranged in five avenues. Leeds created its bazaar and shambles in 1823–5, and its Central Market, 1824–7, a general covered retail market on the Liverpool model. These changes were accompanied by the creation, on roughly the same time scale, of specialized wholesale trading institutions, especially in the larger towns. Leeds built its first Corn Exchange in 1826–8, Sheffield in 1828, Wakefield in 1837–40. ‘Commercial Buildings’ to accommodate more general trades opened in Leeds, Huddersfield, Sheffield, and Barnsley between 1826 and 1837. The growth of these large towns also pioneered the development of fixed shops and of systems of urban itinerant traders. While it was long assumed that poverty inclined the urban food shopper to travel quite long distances on foot to save quite small sums on provisions, fixed shops were emerging in these towns, and from the numerous generic ‘shopkeepers’ listed in the Census from 1841, there gradually emerged more precise designations, indicative of more specialized food trading, or at least the pretension of such specialism. ‘Shopkeepers’ male and female more than doubled between 1841 and 1871, to 56 100 in England and Wales, but cheesemongers also grew, from 2 700 to 4 700, greengrocers from 8 400 to 33 500, and grocers from 37 100 to 111 100 over the same period. Roger Scola’s detailed analysis of Manchester demonstrated the specifics of their location to show the diffusion of shops throughout the growing city, but before 1870 the ‘higher order’ food retailers showed a marked reluctance to leave the more prosperous central business districts and busy thoroughfares, and the higher status residential districts appeared to resist the food retailing businesses (Scola, 1992). While shops were penetrating to most levels of the city, the profile of change was complex. Part of the reason lay in the itinerant traders, part in the plentiful supply of servants for the more prosperous households to whom the travel and transactions costs of food buying were transferred, and part in the gradual growth of delivery services from the better food retailers. The evidence suggests that itinerant traders – costermongers and hawkers – were of very limited significance in the food trades of Britain’s larger towns before 1880, outside the milk and fish businesses, but that they were very central to the food distribution of London by the 1840s or earlier. The relative size of London, its plurality of wholesale markets, and the early and much more extensive spread of the urban footprint created quite different conditions, in which the itinerant traders had a real opportunity. Henry Mayhew, journalist and social researcher, put the total annual trade of costermongers in London, c. 1860, at £626 000, divided fairly evenly between ‘green fruit’ (fresh fruits and nuts), and vegetables but noted the lack of consumption of both among the poorest classes of the city, for whom bread was the priority and fruit the occasional treat. Saturday was their peak trading day, and 2 000 donkey barrows and 3 000 women with ‘shallows and head-baskets’ visited Covent Garden, the capital’s principal fruit and vegetable market from 6 am to purchase supplies for retail; in its Piazza clustered sellers of potted flowers, which costermongers bartered for old clothes; and in Duke’s Place, Houndsditch, a market specialized in 112



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oranges, lemons, and imported nuts, supplied by mainly Jewish merchants, wholesaling to street sellers who were largely Irish women and children. A small group, perhaps 4 per cent of all, were designated by Mayhew as his ‘aristocratic’ vegetable sellers, and these focused their trade on the detached villas, where ‘kept ladies’ were to be found, willing to spend more on fresh produce, and rarely likely to try to sell their cast-off clothes for new potatoes or early peas. This colourful evidence confirmed London as a case apart, where a very marked hierarchy of food distribution had developed as a result of scale and income differences.

4.2 1870s–1914s Several issues produced distinct discontinuities from the 1870s. The grain imports that had been growing since the 1830s, and which had been feared as potentially destructive of UK farmers, grew very sharply from the bad harvests of 1874–5, and thereafter came increasingly to dominate food supply as home production fell. The livestock sector, too, was affected by first domestic disease, pleuropneumonia in the 1850s and then rinderpest in the 1860s, with significant impact upon domestic meat and dairy production. Increased quantities of imports met the gap. Modest agricultural output changes and urban growth combined to produce some shortages of animal feed, very important to the functioning of town transport systems. Technological changes in food processing that had begun before 1870 grew very significantly, and new manufacturing systems began to produce new processed food products. Transport changes continued in both Britain and Ireland, with the completion of the railway systems, and the development of light railways. New products, such as large quantities of fresh milk were enabled to come to market, and new retail systems developed in the form of multiple and chain retailers, and in the retail co-operatives. Although the pattern was not one of consistent prosperity, real incomes in much of Britain experienced significant gains, creating different demands on food systems. By 1914, Britain was not only the most urbanized food market in Europe, and the flight from the land sustained continuing urbanization, it was also the most dependent upon international sources of supply.

Cereal imports and home supplies The basic facts of home and foreign food supply describe the context of the UK food market with great clarity. While most of its European neighbours came to adopt protection in varying forms from the late 1870s , the UK remained committed to free trade, and for long articulated this policy stance as economic ideology. While its farmers and smaller food producers sought support in difficult times, they were left pretty fully exposed to overseas competition, which increasingly appeared global in scope. As Avner Offer has put it, ‘the British margin of cultivation was pushed to the edge of American cornfields, and the British urban fringe ran through the suburbs of colonial and American towns’ (cited in Collins, 2000: 43). Much the same applied to meat and many livestock products. Britain thus became a global exporter of manufactures, capital, 113

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Table 4.2 UK gross imports of cereal, potatoes and flour, 1854–1914 1854

1874

1894

1914

Wheat

755 352

2 109 687

3 562 553

5 279 686

Barley

100 329

575 861

1 587 125

815 089

Oats

141 794

578 521

760 974

719 189

Maize

293 860

878 872

1 695 011

1 983 348

Peas and beans

108 927

212 693

1 398 707

78 248

Rye

  1 246

23 878

51 271

48 426

Wheat meal and flour

185 520

318 175

972 076

511 079

Potatoes

    835

202 530

137 359

169 281

Source: Afton and Turner, ‘The Impact of Foreign Trade’, in Collins (ed.) (2000): 2111–2114.

and people, and importer of raw materials and food, with the result that it provided, up to 1914, an unparalleled stimulus to the global trading system, including the food exports of its European neighbours. Immediate beneficiaries from such demands were the Netherlands and Denmark, where UK and German demand permitted the strategy of intensification as the alternative to more general patterns of protectionism, Russia, and later, Canada, USA, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand. Field crops, cereals and potatoes came increasingly to be sourced from outside the UK after 1870, summarized by the figures of table 4.2 above. This shift to international sources of food supply did not consist just of produce intended for human consumption: it also indicated a rich new source of inputs to livestock farming. The data above also exclude exports, which were of some significance, but only of real magnitude with potatoes, where exports equivalent to 30 per cent of imports took place in 1914, but even then net imports equated to less than 2 per cent of British and Irish output. By contrast, on average, 1909–13, 75 per cent of UK wheat came from abroad; 40 per cent of barley, 26 per cent of oats, and 56 per cent of all cereals. The result was a major shift in the cereal system, new dependence upon imports turning the UK inside out, and placing the major seaports at the centre of grain trades. Most of the imported grain, depending upon source, arrived at Glasgow, Liverpool, Bristol, Hull, and London, and the result was a very significant new concentration of trade. American milling developed new automated systems for stone ‘high milling’, and in the east, increasingly from around 1860, Hungarian and Austrian mills came to adopt roller milling, which produced greater quantities of white flours, and was 114



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more effective at processing hard wheats. These changes were coupled with the gains of continental railway systems in both the USA and mainland Europe to produce the revolution in milling, and to create large concentrated plants. In the USA, the westward spread of wheat growing increased the supply of hard wheats, and Minnesota became the world capital of large-scale milling, with the USA’s surplus capacity for flour production seeking new markets in the UK (Perren, in Collins, 2000, II:1070–1075). In Britain, early adoption of rollers often took place in hybrid systems, using a combination with stones, but from the 1880s new roller mills appeared, larger in scale and speedier in working than the traditional industry, with the five largest capable of producing 250 sacks of flour per hour by 1910, compared with the industry average of only 7 or 8. The combination of imported wheat supplies, increased capitalization and improved distribution led towards concentration, but despite these large firms colluding not to compete in each other’s markets, the industrial concentration ratio was only 19 per cent in 1910. For the consumer, however, there had been real change: the home baker had to adjust to the new types of flour, and the purchaser to a new, lighter and fine-textured loaf made from mixed flours. There was significant consumer resistance to the hard wheat loaf, forcing the larger millers to sell the byproduct lower grades more widely, with Liverpool and Hull firms seeking sales in the south west, where there was a lingering preference for coarse flour. The domestic consumer in the north east continued to prefer the traditional softer flours, where the traditional form of bread, the ‘stotty’ or large flat breadcake, retained consumer allegiance. Price and consumer taste prevented the imported hard wheats securing complete dominance of the bread market. The internationalization of the flour supply was not therefore one of complete organizational change nor one of the homogenization of the British loaf. Some of these cereal imports entered the food chain in different ways. Malt tax was abolished in 1880, along with the import duty on sugar, in the ideological cause of the ‘free mash tun’, the abolition of the ‘artificial preference’ for high-quality homeproduced barley. Expected to promote sales of lower grades of British barley, instead it made imported supplies of barley for malting more attractive, and the shifting pattern of beer production towards light ‘running’ beers made new imported low-nitrogen barleys from Asia Minor, Algeria, India, California, and Chile increasingly attractive. The trade statistics do not disaggregate imports by end use, but by 1900 it was assumed that around 25 per cent of barley malted was of foreign origin. This suggested that the bulk of other barley imports were for animal feed, also entering the food chain indirectly. These changes assisted the growth in industrial scale, but the geographical concentration of malting remained east coast: seven of the largest maltsters were located on the rivers of the Trent and Humber system; three in north Norfolk; six in Suffolk and the south east; and one each in Glasgow, Kirkaldy, and Smethwick, the Scottish maltings also shipping to Ireland, where Guinness in Dublin were themselves the dominant brewer-maltsters, as were Bass at Burton on Trent. Sugar was permitted for use in brewing, and duty was reduced in 1857, and abolished with malt duty in 1880, opening the way for UK beers to become malt-flavoured fermented liquors increasingly removed from their traditional malt base. 115

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Table 4.3 UK gross imports of livestock, meat, and livestock products, 1854–1914 1854

1874

1894

1914

Cattle (000s)

114.3

193.9

475.4

2.2

Sheep (000s)

183.4

758.9

484.6

1.7

133 989

491 652

122 331

267 270

Pigs (000s) Beef

115.4 9 768

13 296

Mutton Pork, bacon, and ham

29 689

146 531

265 411

358 624

121.9

680.6

1 425.2

148.6

Lard

13 950

19 017

71 149

89 671

Butter

24 513

82 289

130 807

202 406

Cheese

19 747

75 454

115 125

123 645

35 109

65 703

Eggs (million)

Milk Source: see table 4.2.

Livestock and livestock produce Livestock, meat and livestock produce also came to be imported in increasing quantities in this period, again leading to changes in the UK food system. The basic figures are summarized above in table 4.3. In many of these products, the UK was even more import-dependent than in grains. Roughly half of beef and mutton was home produced in 1905–9; but just over a third of pig meat and lard; butter, only 13 per cent; cheese around a quarter; eggs, a third; and in all dairy produce, apart from fresh milk, where the UK was 100 per cent self-sufficient, around a quarter. Irish livestock output, 1850–1914, rose from around 20 per cent to 24 per cent of the GB total, and Ireland’s shipments to Britain rose to around 20 per cent of all cattle, 1875–91, 18 per cent of sheep and lambs, and 36 per cent of pigs. International and inter-island trade in livestock thus grew appreciably in the period. Much of the growth was the outcome of rising disposable incomes among particularly urban consumers. Britain demonstrated most of the fundamentals of Engel’s Law 116



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Illustration 4.4  Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Co., c. 1870–1900, chromolithographed trade card, printed by R. Ganton, London

immediately after its formulation. Real wages adjusted for unemployment rose by 75 per cent, 1850–1902, with obvious regional differences, and help to explain the growth in demand for protein and fats in the diet, and the stagnation of bread consumption. Ireland pointed the changes most clearly, where post-Famine labourers’ diets came to include more maize meal, butter, meat, sugar and tea, producing a much more varied food regime, but significant falls in nutritional quality compared with the years before 1845. D. J. Oddy’s work on England provides the best evidence on change over time: between 1863 and 1902–13, family budgets showed bread consumption falling from 4.9 kg per head per week to 3.0, and potatoes from 1.8 kg to 1.4; but sugar rising from 0.2 to 0.5, fats from 0.1 to 0.2, meat from 0.4 to 0.5, and milk from 0.8 to 1.01 (Oddy, 1990). Contemporary observers suggested that the distribution of this food was skewed within the family, the men eating cooked meals of meat, potatoes and porridge, the women more bread with jam or treacle and tea. These changes explained the ready markets for imported eggs, butter, and cheese, meat, and the various processed forms of milk. Imports of lower priced meats in varied forms – salted, canned, frozen, and chilled – were at first thought likely to reduce the market for the home producer, but in general extended the market and regularized meat consumption among the working classes, enabling home farmers to target higher quality outlets. Consumers came to distinguish ‘fresh’ and ‘frozen’, and were relatively 117

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indifferent between, say, fresh beef and fresh lamb or mutton. Even in Ireland, where per capita incomes remained lower, meat became a regular item of urban consumption, albeit in small quantities. These imports also stimulated substitutive responses: the first ‘American’ cheese factory opened in Derby in 1870, followed shortly by five others, and sixteen were operating by 1889. Imports remained successful, and by 1914 several of these new British cheese factories had closed. American and Swiss inward investment created condensed milk plants in Tutbury (Staffordshire) in 1872 and Chippenham (Wiltshire) 1901, locating on major railway milk routes to tap surpluses; by 1905, four condensed milk plants were operating in England, the property of newly merged Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Co and Nestlé. British butter production remained small in scale, and it was Ireland that adopted some co-operative organization and the technical change to centrifugal separators in the face of the growing import trades. This new creamery butter was a superior good to the blended imports that came in 1910 from Denmark, Australasia, Russia, France, and Sweden. The principal reason for the comparative ‘failure’ of British cheese and butter manufacture lay in the international division of labour that emerged in milk. In 1850, the fresh milk supply to most large British towns remained that from the urban dairy, and in some parts of the country this lasted beyond 1920 (Atkins, 2010). Bradford secured 60 per cent of its fresh milk in 1920 from within its boundaries, Edinburgh 52 per cent in 1921, Liverpool just under 30 per cent (1927), and Sheffield around a quarter in 1929. However the development of railway carriage of fresh milk radically changed conditions for London, where local supply fell from 80 per cent in 1850, to 28 per cent in 1880, and 3 per cent in 1910; Belfast, Newcastle, and Birkenhead all fell to around 20 per cent urban supply by 1919–29. The milk carriage of leading railway companies mapped the principal sources of London’s supplies in 1900–4: Great Western, 795 126 hl; London & South Western, 346 675hl; Great Northern, 340 768hl; Great Eastern, 318 050hl; Midland, 272 615hl; London & North Western, 238 538hl; and London, Brighton & South Coast, 142 214hl. Higher returns from fresh milk led to the decline of the cheese and butter production that had long been the only marketing options for many remote districts. Thus cows were milked in the hillside pastures of Wensleydale into back-cans, the milk bulked into churns for carriage by cart to Leyburn Station, and then carried to the Great Northern depot at Finsbury Park in north London, a journey of perhaps 8 hours. Distant supply by rail produced concentrations of supply, with the development of wholesaling businesses, and cascades of traders in retail: by the 1890s, there were 20 wholesale businesses in the London milk trade, and 2 400 retailers. In some towns of the north, families maintained urban dairy systems to 1914 or beyond, with, traditionally, younger sons moving to Liverpool or Burnley to run cowhouses, and the cattle rotated back by train to Wensleydale or Swaledale when dry. Not everyone had access to fresh milk, and some consumers preferred the tinned products, partly perhaps because most was at this stage sweetened, and condensed milk was perceived as richer, influenced by the Nestlé infant milk food tradition. Sadly, poor hygiene and water supplies in working-class homes made this processed milk, diluted with water, one of the causes of high infant mortality, 1880–1914. 118



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New distributive and retail systems Clearly, the railway system had been significant in such changes, and the concentration of supply into seaports laid the basis for new retail systems and emphasized the railway’s role in food distribution. The trunk railway system of Britain was complete by the 1870s, with the very last main line completed in 1876. the Midland Railway’s Settle and Carlisle line, the third direct route between London and Scotland, but the last large-scale effort also to serve remote agricultural communities. Thereafter, much development took place in branch lines, seeking to reach new mineral or industrial traffics, to provide suburban services to major towns, or to serve agriculture. Suburban railways around Manchester and Birmingham helped to reinforce the central-place food market functions with respect of surrounding districts, and for Britain overall by the end of the nineteenth century the urban hierarchy had become strongly log-linear, indicative of a very mature urban system. There were special cases in which improved shipping and fast railway transport created new markets, and established niches: overcoming consumer fear of poisoning, the tomato became more widely consumed in the UK after the mid-1860s, and the island of Guernsey established a major market from 1865, shipping to Portsmouth whence rail carried the crop speedily to Covent Garden market, a traffic running to the mid-1970s, when fuel costs made the island uncompetitive with Dutch glasshouses. A parallel development from the late nineteenth century, again finding a very effective niche market in the UK was the Jersey Royal Fluke potato, discovered around 1880. As the ‘Jersey Royal’ it gained trademark and later PDO designation in the luxury early new potato trade, providing two-thirds of Jersey’s agricultural turnover, and selling 99 per cent of its crop in Britain. Branches were developed by the major railway companies often for strategic or territorial motives, never perhaps anticipated to produce direct real profits, but rather to exclude rivals from potentially profitable territory. Light railways, such as the Easingwold Railway (opened 1891), the Southwold Railway, and the Wisbech & Upwell Tramway were examples of a genre that was on the whole unsuccessful in Britain, but intended to serve rural districts. Between 1898 and 1918, there were applications to construct 8 000 km of light railway, but only 3 380 km were authorized, and less than 1 500 built; even in Scotland, where the lighter financial demands placed upon such lines was potentially very attractive, the light railway was not a real success. The position was different in Ireland, where after 1850 railways were built with government loan support, but also attracted significant quantities of native capital; Ireland’s railways had average construction costs 40 per cent lower than of those in England; but high overheads in terms of level crossings, and poor revenues; despite lower unit wage costs, they failed to prosper beyond the traditional developed east of the country. The period immediately before 1914 has traditionally been seen as a ‘golden age’ for Irish mainline and light railways, but few of the latter ever paid their way: as in much of Britain, they made developmental contributions to the more remote rural districts, for such activities as fishing and some dairying, but were of more social than economic value. 119

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Food retailing was significantly affected by the development of the chain store, led by the Co-operative movement. Surprisingly, co-operation worked very poorly in Britain among farmers and food producers, but as a system proved very powerful in retail development up to the 1920s and beyond. From the foundation of the Rochdale Pioneers Society in 1844, co-operative membership grew rapidly to 100 000 by the mid-1860s, 547 000 members in 971 societies by 1881, 1.7 million in 1 437 societies in 1900, and over 3 million members with a turnover of £88 million by 1914. Their principal trade was food, delivered by supply from the Co-operative Wholesale Society (1863) and its Scottish sibling, but also vertically integrated and supplied from its own farms, starting with the Jumbo Farm, Middleton (acquired 1851). James Jefferys estimated the market share of large-scale retailers in grocery and provisions in 1915 was 31 per cent of all trade, in which the market leader was the Co-operative group ( Jefferys, 1954). Trading after the food adulteration scares of 1860 on their safety, quality and price, bolstered by the promise of dividends to members, the Co-operatives gained very significant positions in the industrial towns of Britain. They were important in rural Britain, providing a notable and flexible service to country districts. Some of the ‘large-scale’ food trade was conducted by the new departmental stores, such as Whiteley’s, but it was the retail chains that developed from the new distributive and concentrated import systems, and were often built up from mergers of small familyowned multiple shop businesses. Many of the food retail giants of 1914 had developed in this way: Pearks Dairies (London, 1860), Vye & Sons (Ramsgate, 1817), and Williams (Manchester, c. 1860) all exemplified the family grocer growing incrementally, what Peter Mathias termed the ‘conservative end of the spectrum’ (Mathias, 1967: 38); but it was larger firms in the big cities that formed the basis for the retail giants of 1914, such as Lipton (Glasgow, 1871), incorporating Cochrane (Glasgow, 1881), Massey (Glasgow, 1872), and Templeton (Glasgow, c. 1880. Like the Co-operatives, these displayed economies of scale in logistics and purchasing, and tended also to specialize: Lipton, for example, built his business on the foundations of ham, bacon, cheese, and butter, and Massey on ham, bacon, sausages, butter, cheese, lard, and margarine, promoting the new fashion of the traditional English breakfast to the Glasgow working class. In southern England, Home and Colonial Stores built a business wholly committed at core to imported and later creamery butters, despite its label of ‘tea stores’, with 330 shops by around 1900. Smaller shops, and the co-operatives, often using van deliveries, continued to serve the rural districts.

Branding and manufactured foods At the same time manufactured and branded food products continued to grow in their position in the UK food market. The Bass brewery produced what is usually recognized as the first trademark, its red triangle, in 1855, and had probably been employing the diamond before 1840; when, in 1875, the first controlling legislation was passed, Bass secured the first three registrations, number 1, for the red triangle on pale ale, number 2 for the red diamond on Burton ale and number 3, the brown diamond for extra stout. 120



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Illustration 4.5  A group of assistants, all workers at the Home & Colonial Store on 10 Broad Street, Waterford, May 1910, photographic ­negative glass

The rise of concentrated supply, much of it imported, of national distribution, and of large food processing and manufacturing plants helped to create the wider use of the trademark, and the rise of the promise of the experience intrinsic to branded goods. Thus the development of the Co-operative shops and the retail multiples – Lipton, Home and Colonial, Maypole, and Sainsbury – offered consumers the food security 121

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they desired after the adulteration scandals of the 1860s, leading to the attribution of quality, price, and safety values to their sales (Birchall, 1994). The multiple retailers thus became the true brand. With falling sugar prices, and the need to diversify in the falling corn market, fruit growing for factory jam making grew, with by 1914 leading ‘quality’ firms like Chivers of Histon, Beach, and Crosse and Blackwell, a cheaper trade of ‘smashers’, such as Hartley and Pink, and there was also scope for more aspirational products, symbolized by Tiptree. The ultimate development of the health trope in sugary branded products came in the 1890s, with tonic wines, manufactured in the UK using some imported grape pulps, mixed with Liebig’s extract of meat or other nutrition supplements, and highly sweetened, such as Wincarnis, or the brewing linked Glendenning’s Beef & Malt Wine: the former remains on sale with a later (1920s) brand, Sanatogen, in the present day. Changing technology and the growth in industrial scale were assisted by changes in corporate finance that aided investment, and as in beer for bread this opened new production possibilities. Large plants were developed in major towns, pioneered by Nevill in the Caledonian Road, London (1854), and his later plants at Herne Hill, Harrow and Acton; and in 1889, the Middlesex Aerated and six other bread factories opened in the south. Flour and bread with brand added value also emerged in this period: Smith of Macclesfield devised a way of restoring wheat germ to flour, and sold the product as Hovis – produced from the Latin hominis vis - in the 1880s, and Fitton & Sons patented and sold Hovis from their Macclesfield and London mills from 1898; and Turog, Daren, and Bermaline (from Haddington, Scotland) were all produced before 1914, carrying implicit health qualities in the brand. The ­addition of sterilized wheat germ or malt to such breads and flours produced a slightly sweetened taste, chiming clearly with general consumer preferences of the period. Branding and multiple store systems also affected the meat trades. The consequence of rising patters of imported meat in UK supply, illustrated in table 4.3, brought concentrations of imported frozen and processed meat to the major ports, from which chain retailing could develop (Perren, 1985). From 1899, the Anglo company established a processing plant at Fray Bentos, Argentina, and this became the leading brand of corned beef throughout the UK market. The Liverpool Vestey family of butchers, established their international firm in the 1890s, importing meat from South America, Australia and New Zealand, and establishing their own meatprocessing plant in Uruguay. In 1909 they entered shipping, and in 1911 created their own shipping line, Blue Star, which operated refrigerated ships, and linked to their depots in Liverpool and the London cold stores (opened 1895). Vesteys, later trading in retail butchery as Britain’s largest chain, Dewhurst, suggested that as in other food trades the way forward lay with multiples, and the early development confirmed this. Multiple butchers expanded quickly from 200 shops in 1880, to 1 253 in 1895, 3 828 in 1910, and 3 675 in 1915, but this represented a peak, and the share of multiples in the meat trades fell thereafter, as consumers seem to have preferred to negotiate over smaller cuts with local butchers, even if they, like Dewhurst, were selling largely imported produce. 122



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4.3 1914–2000 The impact of the Great War The outbreak of war in August 1914 might have been expected to expose the fundamental weaknesses of the UK food system as it had evolved since the 1870s. In practice, its impact was significantly less than anticipated: the long-term shift towards grass offered the potential for relatively speedy adjustment of grain output; careful management of food imports balanced shipping space, even after the growth of the U-Boat threat from 1916; problems of labour were met by Boards in England and Wales, and the expansion of labour supply from women and prisoners of war; food controls, such as the increase in extraction rates in milling (to 70 per cent or more), helped to enhance the efficiency with which food was used; and substantial increases in consumer prices provided a system of rationing without formal state controls, bar sugar and butter in 1918. Proposals late in the war to restrict luxury sales of cream cakes were rejected on the dual grounds that price would ration, and that they were important to morale. Transfers from grass raised the area in tillage by 20 per cent, 1913–18, but the value of British farm output fell, because of the move towards lower value farm output, cereals and potatoes. Despite this, the achievement of British farming was less than identified by T. H. Middleton’s official history in 1923 (42 per cent growth in home food supply), and P. E. Dewey’s reassessment (1980) suggested home production rose only from 38 per cent in 1914 to 40 per cent in 1918, with imports meeting 53 per cent, and, critically, 7 per cent provided by more effective use of foodstuffs and the elimination of waste. The decline in dairying opened the door to margarine, a new product from the 1890s, of which UK output expanded from 78 000 tonnes in 1914 to 238 000 in 1918 without fully satisfying demand.

Food processing, retailing and cooking in the interwar period World shortages of grain in 1919 and 1920 led to high prices, and the index of retail food prices rose from 131 in 1915, to 215 in 1918, and peaked at 256 in 1920, just when the Agriculture Act (1920) was to provide a four-year notice period for cereal price guarantees, to smooth the passage to peacetime conditions (based upon Whetham, 1978; Walton, 1972; Mathias, 1967; Birchall, 1994; Gourvish and Wilson, 1994). World prices collapsed with bountiful harvests in 1921, and the UK immediately abandoned price support by repealing the Act of 1920, what has been called ‘the great betrayal’ of the cereal farmer. Support systems were introduced later, such as the subsidy for beet sugar (1925), the Forestry Commission (1919), the Wheat Act (1932) and a series of producer-controlled marketing boards for hops (1932), potatoes (1934), pigs and bacon 1933), and milk (1933), helped to stabilize markets, but were regarded with suspicion by consumers and the Economist and the net result over the period was reversion to the livestock-based farm system of before 1913. Irish supplies of store cattle, that had continued from 1921, were restricted by the ‘economic war’, 1932–8, though some of the losses were offset by smuggling via Northern Ireland. Some direct benefits accrued 123

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to some consumers: subsidized milk was provided for schoolchildren, and by 1937–8 more than half in state schools were drinking milk at the morning break, and milk at reduced prices was made available to nursing and expectant mothers in towns with significant levels of unemployment. For much of the period 1918–39, unemployment rates were high, although those in work enjoyed gains in real income over the period. The outcome for Great Britain was therefore a patchy impact on the demand for food, and the experience of food systems mixed. Labour force participation rates were very high for males, well over 90 per cent, 1911–51, but female participants fell slightly, from the 35 per cent of 1911 over the same period, with the decline most marked among the widowed and divorced, and with low levels of employment among the married, at 10 per cent or below, 1911–39, partly the symptom of the ‘marriage bar’. At the same time, there were changing material conditions in homes, with improvements in cooking facilities: before 1914, many working-class homes had been severely restricted in the capacity to cook, with a coal-fired range typical of provision, providing capacity only to baking and boiling, with a fork for hand-held grilling of meats, and perhaps a single gas ring for frying. This had helped to explain the high level of preferences for convenience foods, bread, butter or margarine, jam, cooked and tinned meats, cheese, and the emergence of the fish-and-chip shop, of which there were 25 000 in 1910, and perhaps 35 000 in 1939. The increasing availability of gas cookers from around 1900s, and from the early 1930s, electric cookers, opened the way to greater domestic ambition, and raised expectations of the domestic woman. Between 1898 and 1914, the proportion of houses with gas cookers rose to 64 per cent: although the gas cooker was more expensive than the efficient coal-fired range, its convenience and flexibility changed domestic habits (Daunton, 1990). It was in this context that food retailing changed, with further advances in multiple shop, the continuing strength of the co-operative movement, the advent of what Jefferys terms the ‘variety’ multiples, and the development of branded foodstuffs ( Jefferys, 1954). Large-scale retailers increased their share of the food market 1920–39, from 20–24 per cent to as much as 36 per cent, divided in 1939 fairly equally between the multiple shop retailers and the co-operatives. Many also integrated backwards into their own food processing and manufacturing. The variety chain stores – Marks & Spencer, Woolworth, British Home Stores, and Littlewoods – grew rapidly in the period, from less than 3 per cent of all retail sales in 1920, to 20 per cent by 1938, but remained before 1939 relatively modest in the food market. The development of branded and processed goods in food retailing reduced the skill requirement for the shopkeeper, and Retail Price Maintenance (RPM) for such goods protected the position of the small-scale grocer, otherwise unable to compete on price. One estimated that in 1938, well over a third of grocery sales from small shops in the working class grocery trade was covered by RPM, whereas in the Co-operative sales to the same sector it was 13 per cent or lower (Kuipers, cited by Jefferys, 1954: 173). Larger firms reinforced their position in particular markets as milk and bread, as bottled retailing of milk developed: London had roughly 10 per cent of its milk bottled by 1914, and by 1927, there were 50 million bottles in use; United Dairies sold all of its milk bottled from 1929; and Glasgow had 124



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70 per cent of its milk sold in bottle by 1930. The Co-operatives had a quarter of the markets for bottled milk by the late 1930s, and took a one-third share of all domestic deliveries, also delivering bread by vans, and taking 16 per cent of the total market by 1939. In some areas of the country, dairymen began making second deliveries, or ‘pudding’ rounds, in which they sold many other grocery goods door-to-door, processes eased by the widespread adoption of packaged and branded foodstuffs. Almost alone in the UK food and drink market in being wholly insulated from foreign competition was beer, and this industry illustrated some of the same tendencies towards branding and concentration as food in general (Gourvish and Wilson, 1994). From the 1870s, the industry had shown considerable tendencies to concentrate, as joint-stock finance combined with the gathering impact of the temperance movement to drive them towards greater tied house estates, and to establish powerful territorial control of their markets. The railway made this easier, and from the late 1880s, for example, Tetley of Leeds were promising delivery within 20 miles of the city by dray: beers were delivered in bulk by train to stations, and the dray, horses and draymen travelled out by train to spend the week making deliveries. Depot systems were adopted by many of the larger breweries, or those with particular reputations, and Guinness, Bass and Whitbread all distributed in bulk to franchised bottlers, a system of particular importance in Scotland where the tied trade, even at the beginning of the 1950s, was very small, perhaps less than 25 per cent, by comparison with the 75 per cent or more in England and Wales. Consumer preference for bright bottled beers grew in the inter-war period, as did the taste for improved public houses, and for drinking in working-men’s clubs, and all these changes favoured branded and nationally marketed beers, when consumption overall was falling. Guinness and Bass led the way in promotion techniques, with slogans such as ‘Guinness Is Good for You’ (1928) and ‘Great Stuff this Bass’, but under pressure from declining markets, the Brewers’ Society ran a combined campaign from 1933, ‘Beer is Best’. Brand recognition surveys in 1933 suggested that over half of beer for home consumption consisted of Guinness, Bass and Whitbread, but a second survey of 1938 reduced their share to less than a third. Few brewers followed Davenport of Birmingham in adopting home deliveries as the old private sale market declined, although by 1938 they had secured 250 000 customers, the beer equivalent of the dairy firms. Beer, then, mirrored changes in the food system as a whole, and offered a particularly sharp demonstration of changed market conditions before 1939.

A regulated food market War immediately applied the lessons of 1914–18, and brought food control, rationing, and a second food production campaign (Murray, 1955; Burnett, 1995; Martin, 2000). This raised calorie supply from home agriculture by 50 per cent or more, 1938–44, leaving some of the protein shortages to be supplied by imports such as spam (a tinned, spiced ham), corned beef and dried egg from the USA. The impact of wartime provisions was significant: The Agriculture Act of 1947 altered UK food policy radically, and instituted a system of home production supported by quotas and subsidies. Support 125

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continued, albeit in different forms, from EU entry in 1973. Brands and advertising were at first restricted; by rationing; although bread rationing ended in 1948, extraction rates remained at 80 per cent or above, leading to widespread criticism of the ‘National Loaf ’; and there was a strong sense of hunger, and desire for ‘something tasty’ until the final ending of rationing in the summer of 1954. Meat, significantly, had been rationed by price limit, not quantity, and was the last to be freed of ration in 1954. Farm support, once established in 1947, continued, and EU entry in 1973 produced quite different support systems, but nonetheless protected the food producer.

Innovation in processing, packaging and retailing Despite the austerity years, pre-packaged foodstuffs were permanent elements of the food supply, and the Co-operative tried out self-service grocery in London as early as 1942, and by 1950 90 per cent of all self-service shops were co-operatives. Despite this, the Co-op movement lost its way during the 1950s and 1960s, retaining a good reputation for value in food, but less successful in non-food lines, and increasingly appearing less glamorous in the face of new branded foods (Birchall, 1994). UK households gradually became smaller, the average falling from 4.6 in 1901 to 3.4 in 1951 and to 2.6 in 1985, with half in 1983 consisting of single persons or childless married couples. Women’s work expanded, notably among the married, who grew from 22 per cent in 1951 in the active workforce to 29 per cent in 1961 and 42 per cent by 1971, both changes promoting the demand for more convenience and branded foodstuffs. The system of Retail Price Maintenance was abolished in 1964, and although it had only applied, on average, to about an eighth of the UK food market, its abolition may have assisted the growth in scale, and the changing balance in retailing. Multiple stores, including new entrants grew stronger in the environment of the later 1950s and 1960s, and the balance of power shifted in their favour, direct contracting with large-scale food manufacturers squeezing out the traditional wholesale intermediaries: it was probably only the inherited stock of town-centre commercial property that restricted further growth. New products reinforced many of these changes: refrigerators diffused into the UK home increasingly from the mid-1950s, reaching 69 per cent of UK households by 1971; and freezers spread from 4 per cent in 1971, to 10.5 per cent by 1973, 66 per cent by 1985, and 87 per cent by 1993. Frozen food had enjoyed a false start in the UK with Birds Eye in 1938, a joint venture of Chivers and Frosted Foods Ltd, applying US General Foods technology and branding, but these changed conditions of the 1950s created new opportunities, and strongly differentiated the UK from most of its northern European neighbours: Bird’s Eye had 60 lines on sale by 1961, and by 1990 81 per cent of households used frozen peas, 73 per cent frozen poultry, and 72 per cent frozen vegetables and meat products (Oddy, 1995; Wilson, 1968). From the early 1970s, the microwave oven began to diffuse into the domestic kitchen. Perhaps significantly, notifiable cases of food poisoning in the UK rose from 20 495 to 72 790, 1983–93. Such changes, and the necessary logistical support, impacted on the retail system, and increasingly favoured the growth in scale. Inspired by the new entry of Carrefour 126



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into south Wales from 1969, UK multiples began to develop superstores and later ­hypermarkets, and to dispose of many of their smaller sites. Between 1970 and 2000, the structure of food retailing in the UK and Ireland continued along these lines. Large numbers of supermarket groups came and went in the 1950s, with many regional or sub-regional multiples disappearing by acquisition. By 2002, the top four supermarket groups in the UK – Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury, and Morrison (including Safeway) – held around 73 per cent of the national grocery market, and the UK market was more highly concentrated than any in Europe, bar Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland. Below these giants, over 50 000 convenience stores survived, including petrol stations which sell groceries, but numbers were falling, and retail sales growth was far behind that of the supermarkets. Of these smaller stores, some were part of a growing group in the hands of multiples, under 8 per cent in 2001; 13 per cent in affiliated groups, also growing in the 2000s; and 62 per cent unaffiliated independents, the local or corner shop that was under increasing pressure (their number fell to around half the UK convenience store population by 2010). Ireland saw the growth of larger chains, but its food market remained less concentrated. Grouping also took place in food manufacturers, with large-scale processors and owners of brands such as Northern Foods and Premier Foods supplying many of the larger retail groups, the first originated in Northern Dairies in 1937, with some distinctive brands – Fox’s Biscuits and Holland’s Pies – but largely manufacturing ‘own brand’ goods. Above these were the great global ‘agrifood’ corporations, many of which have significant interest in the UK market: in terms of global sales Tesco were placed sixth in 2002, with over $40 387 million, and Wal-Mart, who acquired UK’s Asda, top with $246 525 million; Unilever of UK came third in global food manufacturing and trading, at $25 670 million, with major transnational corporations that have made major UK acquisitions, Nestlé ($54 254 million) and Kraft Foods ($29 723 million) first and second. By 2000, global corporations had acquired powerful positions in various sectors of the UK food trade, more so than in the EU overall, where processing remained predominantly of smaller scale. Beneath these giants, significant advance has been made since the 1970s by multiples capable of conveying aspirational values in their trading. The early success of Sainsbury had indicated this, but telling UK examples are Marks & Spencer and Waitrose, the supermarket chain of the John Lewis Partnership, and quality regionals such as Booths; they point towards more recent changes and segmentation in the market. At the other end of UK food distribution, recent European entrants, Aldi (1989) and Lidl (1994) provided the modern equivalent of the ‘cut case’ early British supermarket. Marks & Spencer had sold foodstuffs from 1931, principally vegetables, fruit and canned goods, and even in the 1950s concentrated their aim on certain sectors, emphasizing clean food and hygiene in their marketing. While they have diversified, they remained in what market analysts would call the ‘luxury’ market, probably with 3–4 per cent of the UK food market, but very strong in their key fields of innovation: chill-cook produce, symbolized by their chicken sold from 1960, and subsequently developed as the Oakham brand; and imported luxuries, promoted if not wholly pioneered by M&S, such as grapefruit (1930s), avocado pears (1959), iceberg lettuce (1980), and king 127

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prawns (later 1970s). Frozen or chilled meals were sold from 1973, and new consumer tastes for Chinese, Italian, and Indian foods were met by such products, and the boilin-the-bag variants. Also small in UK market share in 2000, Waitrose have represented a similar approach but from the base of a comprehensive supermarket. Both pointed to the shifting taste of many consumers in 2000.

Changing tastes and food cultures A number of factors influenced this ‘exotification’ of the UK food market from the 1970s. Significant immigration from the West Indies (over 525 000 by the 1980s), south Asia (1.27 million), including the east African Asian diaspora (155 000 by 1981), and from Chinese communities (109 000 by 1984) brought new consumer tastes, and diffused new approaches to food and new imported ingredients (Panayi, 2007). Many were employed in restaurants and food businesses, and the displaced Asian community entered the ‘corner shop’ grocery businesses on a large scale, opening for long hours and helping these convenience shops to survive. Significantly, these migrants clustered into the principal metropolitan districts of the UK, although the Chinese community, being more strongly concentrated into food businesses, did diffuse more widely. Earlier migration had led to a peak of Italian-born residents in 1971, at around 108 000, but numbers subsequently fell. By 2000, the UK had an estimated 8 000 ‘Indian’ restaurants (Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi), 7 600 Chinese, and 5 000 Italian. Together these groups formed a powerful force for change in the UK food culture, and influenced wider developments. Changes in UK food culture were not, however, simply imported via newly arrived ethnic groups. Traditional British cuisine had been plain, dull and functional, and often averse to anything ‘fancy’. The deprived circumstances of the war years and post-war rationing intensified this, and shortages removed the principal virtue of such cuisine, the use of good quality ingredients cooked simply, and cooked better at home than in the restaurant. In the mid-1950s, the main locations for ‘eating out’ were pubs and hotels, or fish-and-chip shops with restaurant facilities, such as Harry Ramsden’s at Guiseley. Against this tradition, Raymond Postgate produced the first Good Food Guide in 1951, as an evangelical annual survey, intending to end ‘cruelty to food’, and to develop in Britain food of freshness and quality akin to that of France. While many of the strictures of Postgate, Egon Ronay, and the great cookery writer, Elizabeth David, had limited social diffusion, from the 1960s numbers of restaurants grew, and in the 1980s and 1990s a wave of new opportunities to eat out developed, as the UK eventually demonstrated its new food culture. Fashion for first the adoption of nouvelle cuisine and then the development of fusion food, mixing the most attractive elements of global cooking, indicated the extent of transformation of UK food culture by 2000. These changes were reinforced by the advent of mass foreign travel, beginning with the first ‘package holidays’ in 1950, which began with Corsica, Palma and Lourdes, but became dominated from 1954 to the Costa Brava. Numbers of holidays abroad were 2 million in 1951, 4 million in 1961, and by 1980 over 9 million, roughly a third to Spain, thus introducing a wide swathe of British society to new vegetables and fruits, despite 128



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the export of traditional British food outlets to foreign resorts that also took place. New waves of particular foreign food styles were repatriated with returning holidaymakers, most recently the arrival of ‘Tex-Mex’ with those returning from Florida. Thus olive oil, which had been a product only to be purchased from the chemist’s shop in 1950, made the transition into mass consumption as foodstuff. Restaurant eating was further stimulated by these cultural influences, and by 2000, 686 million restaurant meals were taken, at an average cost of £6.7, pointing to breadth of definition, but also to the generality of the habit. It pointed to the growth, if not absolute generality, of what had by then become known as the ‘foodie’ culture. The final outcome of these changed cultural attitudes towards food, most notable in the years after 1980, was the diminution of seasonality. The development of European lorry freight of fruit and vegetables, and the expansion of intensive horticulture in the Netherlands and newer glasshouse zones, such as Almeira, have helped to eliminate seasonal gaps. Dutch tomatoes competed all-year on world markets, and the many small-scale growers of southern Spain, distributing through co-operatives, and blessed with an average temperature of 20º and annual sunshine of 3 000 hours, were exporting, in rank order, tomatoes, peppers, watermelons, Galia melons, beans, lettuce, and cucumbers by 1998. UK producers retained a majority of the annual supply of lettuce to home markets up to 1999, but thereafter, imports took the greater share, and of the range of fruit and vegetables consumed in the UK by 2000, only carrots, potatoes and watercress were available from UK producers all year. By 2000, air freight had further extended the UK’s supply base, and correspondingly reduced seasonality: in 2000, nearly 12 per cent of the UK’s fruit and vegetable supplies were imported from Africa, and some commodities, such as Kenyan fresh green beans, mostly reached the UK by air, a trade rising from 11 000 tonnes in 1988 to 34 000 tonnes in 2000 (DEFRA, Food Chain Economic Unit, April 2007). A number of consumer ‘resistance’ movements confirmed these developments. From 1961, the industry-wide adoption of the Chorleywood breadmaking process (David, 1977) , which offered very rapid and consistent fermentation, led to the creation of the much internationally reviled white British loaf, and assisted concentration in the baking business: over half of the British market was in the hands of two large companies by 1985, Associated British Foods and Rank Hovis McDougall, and at the end of the century 80 per cent of the market consisted of wrapped and sliced loaves from large bakeries; in-store bakeries, in the principal supermarkets, took a 17 per cent share; the classic ‘master baker’, had fallen by 2000 to around 5 per cent of the market. Interesting attempts have been made to promote ‘artisan’ bakers and to establish a campaign for real bread, but while signifying dissatisfaction with the homogenized loaf, no real invasion of market share had been made by 2000. That campaign was based upon the model created from 1971 by CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale), the consumer movement that sought to defend and promote traditional UK cask beers against the keg beers that appeared during the 1960s, brands such as Watney’s Red Barrel or Double Diamond, and the products of the modern international giants on the UK beer market, Carlsberg, Heineken, and Molson Coors. Membership of CAMRA rose to 30 000 by 1991, and went on to reach 130 000 in 2011, 129

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with traditional cask beers being the only remaining elements of growth in a declining market. Despite their enthusiasm, bright and bottled foreign beers attained significant places in the UK drink market, and wine and spirit mixes have also grown significantly to take much of the old beer market. CAMRA must thus be seen as significant, but perhaps less so in absolute market measures, and the same might be argued for various other imitators, such as campaigns for traditional cheeses (often involving their reinvention) and a range of organic foods: between 1996 and 2000, land in organic production rose from 50 000 ha to 472 500 ha, although 80 per cent was grassland, devoted to extensive livestock production. Both cheese and beer showed some of the realities of the modern food market: ‘American’ cheese had been welcomed in the 1860s and cask beers in the 1960s because they were reliable and consistent, and the history of the UK food system in the last two decades of the twentieth century suggests that these criteria remained significant. The second millennium thus ended with signs of new taste demands, strong expressed consumer taste for the craft or artisan foodstuff, but revealed preference for the supermarket.

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Bibliography Atkins, P. (2010) Liquid materialities. A history of milk, science and the law, Farnham. Bagwell, P S (1974) The transport revolution from 1770, London Birchall, J. (1994) Co-op: the people’s business, Manchester. Burnett, J. (1995) ‘The decline of a staple food. Bread and the baking industry in Britain, 1890–1990’, in A. P. den Hartog (ed.), Food technology, science and marketing. European diet in the twentieth century, East Lothian, pp. 66–78. Collins, E. J. T. (ed.) (2000) The agrarian history of England and Wales,VII, parts I and II, Cambridge. Corley, T. A. B. (1972) Quaker Enterprise in Biscuits. Huntley and Palmers of Reading 1822–1972, London. Daunton, M. J. (1990) ‘Housing’, in F. M. L. Thompson (ed.), The Cambridge social history of Britain 175–1950, 2, People and their environment, Cambridge, pp. 195–250. Daunton, M. (ed.) (2000) The Cambridge urban history of Britain, III, 1840–1950, Cambridge. David, E. (1977) English bread and yeast cookery, Harmondsworth. DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), Food Chain Economic Unit, April 2007. Dewey, P.E. (1980) ‘Food production and policy in the United Kingdom, 1914–1918’. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (Fifth Series), 30, pp. 71–89. Dickson, D. (2005) Old world colony: Cork and South Munster 1630–1830, Cork. Gourvish, T. R. and Wilson, R. G. (1994) The British brewing industry 1830–1980, Cambridge. Grady, K. (1989) The Georgian public buildings of Leeds and the West Riding, Thoresby Society, 133, Leeds. Holderness, B. A. (1985) British agriculture since 1945, Manchester. Jefferys, J. B. (1954) Retail trading in Britain 1850–1950, Cambridge. Martin, J. (2000) The development of modern agriculture. British farming since 1931, Basingstoke. Mathias, P (1959) The brewing industry in England 1700–1830, Cambridge Mathias, P. (1967) Retailing revolution. A history of multiple retailing in the food trades based upon the allied supplies group of companies, London. Mingay, G. E. (ed.) (1989) The agrarian history of England and Wales, VI, 1750–1850, Cambridge. Müller, H. G. (1991) ‘Industrial food preservation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’, in C. A. Wilson (ed.), ‘Waste Not, Want Not’, Food preservation from early times to the present day, Edinburgh. Murray, K. A. H. (1955) Agriculture, London. Ó Gráda, C. (1977) ‘The beginnings of the Irish creamery system, 1880–1914’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, XXX, pp. 284–305. Ó Gráda, C. (1994) Ireland, a new economic history 1780–1939, Oxford.

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Oddy, D. J. (1990) ‘Food, drink and nutrition’, in F.M.L. Thompson (ed.) The Cambridge social history of Britain 1750–1950, 2, People and their environment, Cambridge, pp. 251–278. Oddy, D. J. (1995) ‘From corner shop to supermarket. The revolution in food retailing in Britain, 1932–1992’, A. P. den Hartog (ed.), Food technology, science and marketing. European diet in the twentieth century, East Lothian, pp. 187–199. Panayi, P. (2007) ‘The immigrant impact on London’s food since c 1850’, in P. Atkins, J. Lummel and D. J. Oddy (eds), Food and the city in Europe since 1800, Aldershot, pp. 189–199. Perren, R. (1995) Agriculture in depression, 1870–1940, Cambridge. Perren, R. (1985) ‘The retail and wholesale meat trade 1880–1939’, D. J. Oddy and D.S. Derek (eds), Diet and health in modern Britain, London, pp. 46–65. Phillips, M. (1992) ‘The evolution of markets and shops in Britain’, Benson, John and Shaw, Gareth, eds, The evolution of retail systems, c. 1800–1914, Leicester, pp. 53–75. Porter, S. (1982) ‘Farm transport in Huntingdonshire, 1610–1749’, Journal of Transport History, 3rd series, pp. 35–45. Scola, R. (1992) Feeding the Victorian city. The food supply of Manchester 1770–1870, Manchester. Thompson, E.P. (1971) ‘The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century’, Past & Present, 50, pp. 76–136. Vaughan, W. E. (ed.) (1996) A new history of Ireland, VI, Ireland under the Union, II, 1870–1921, Oxford. Vries, J. de (1984) European urbanization 1500–1800, London. Walton, J. K. (1972) Fish & chips and the British working class 1870–1940, London. Whetham, E. H. (1978) The agrarian history of England and Wales, VIII, 1914–1939, Cambridge. Wilson, Ch. (1968) Unilever 1945–1965. Challenge & response in the post-war industrial revolution, London.

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Northern France

Illustration 5.1  Feast of William the Conqueror with his half-brother, bishop Odo, ­blessing food and beverages, late 11th century, Bayeux ­tapestry

5 Northern France, 1000–1750 Florent Quellier From the eleventh century to the thirteenth, France experienced remarkable economic and demographic growth. The basis for this was laid in the tenth century, with the ending of the Norman raids (following the signing of the Treaty of Saint-Clair-surEpte in 911), the return of peace, and the revival of abbey foundation (cf. Cluny in 910). Within what are the borders of present-day France, the population would have been just over six million in about 1100, over nine million in about 1200 and about twenty million in 1328. Population growth and rapid urban expansion brought with them increased demand for agricultural produce. The rise in agricultural production (essentially cereals), an absolutely necessary condition for feeding these greater numbers, was made possible by the more intensive working of the land. The increasing number of annual ploughings resulted in the improvement of agricultural land regeneration, especially as, from the year 1000 on, the use of the plough became widespread throughout the rich cereal-growing land to the north of the Loire. The eleventh century also saw the harrow soon appearing alongside the plough, and agriculture in northern France also benefited from the gradual replacement of the ox by the horse as a draught animal from the twelfth century onwards. However, the structural shortage of animal manure limited crop yields, all the more so because, from the tenth century to the twelfth, the economy was heavily dependent on cereal farming. As a result, the population expansion that occurred throughout the country between the tenth and the thirteenth centuries was highest in the cereal-growing areas (where the great land clearances had taken place), and less in wooded, uncultivated, moorland and marshy areas. During the 1260s and 1270s, the great land clearances lost impetus in northern France, the country’s most densely populated area, thereby causing economic growth to mark time. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the situation was reversed, the period being marked by economic, social, political, and moral crises, by the abandonment of farmland, by war, and, above all, by the decimation of a population ravaged by the Black Death, which hit Europe in 1347. Between 1347 and 1450, the population within the kingdom of France’s 1328 borders was halved, declining from sixteen million to eight million. In the mid-fifteenth century, the situation improved and a period of reconstruction began. The return of peace in 1453, and especially the less severe impact of recurrences of the plague created fresh scope for a new, rapid increase in population, which in turn stimulated agricultural production. From before 1475, farms were being re-established on the richest agricultural lands and the growth, both of the population and of agricultural production, reached a peak in about 1490, remaining steady until the mid-sixteenth century; that century as a whole was above all a period of recovery (the beau siècle or ‘fine century’) and saw the total population of France within what are now her present-borders rising to between nineteen and twenty-one million. Signs 135

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of a slowing down of the economy were detectable after 1560–1570, with the period between 1570 and 1720 being marked by a distinctly more difficult economic situation, particularly during the last three decades of Louis XIV’s reign. The population started to expand again in the eighteenth century, and by 1740 had reached 24.6 million; the reign of Louis XV (1715–1774) was in fact a period of great economic prosperity (Duby, 1975; Terrier, 1998; Leturcq, 2004).

5.1  The seasonal food supply cycle Food supply during the Middle Ages and the early modern period was characterized by not only strong seasonal variation in the quantity of available foodstuffs, but also their quality and price. In late spring, the customary tension associated with the inter-harvest period served only to emphasize the fact that the agro-food market was dependent upon the passing of the seasons and the wild fluctuations in harvest yields from one year to the next. In a pre-industrial society with a largely compartmentalized economy, the availability of foodstuffs depended largely on local agricultural and piscicultural conditions; what was eaten was also influenced by the religious calendar. The hardships of the time, such as war, epidemics, epizootic diseases (temporarily prevalent and widespread diseases in an animal population) and the vagaries of the weather could also seriously disrupt agricultural supplies.

The hardships of the time Until 1730–1740, food supplies remained unpredictable for the great majority of the population. A poor harvest was enough to see the spectre of food shortages arising once again. As the population’s diet was based on cereals, a bad harvest led to price increases and high mortality among the most poverty-stricken classes. In spring, cereal prices tended usually to increase as cereal reserves decreased, and prices rocketed if the coming harvest looked as though it was going to be bad, or even poor. The interharvest period was always marked by price pressure and by the risk of riots. Moreover, the major grain holders, such as the various religious communities, the aristocracy, and the big farmers, speculated on price rises and held their grain back from the market. In writings, they were called monopoleurs (monopoly holders) or accapareurs (hoarders, grabbers, monopolisers). Scarcity, plenty and speculation were powerful factors in price determination in an economic system that was only feebly regulated by the government. A history of food supply must therefore take account of the succession of bad, average and good harvests. War and the unpredictability of the weather were responsible in equal measure for these years of years of dire destitution. Battles and the passage of troops exposed the harvests to danger, especially where a scorched earth policy was pursued, and the economic crisis of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was thus made even worse by the troop movements and armed banditry accompanying the conflict between the kings of France and England. This was the case in the rich countryside of the Paris region, which suffered as a result of the ravages of the soldiery between 1346 and 1365. 137

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The lands of the kingdom of France were plagued by armed conflicts until the midseventeenth century, the series of civil wars known as La Fronde (1648–1652) being an example. From the start of the personal reign of Louis XIV (1661–1715), however, control of the army and troop movements improved; most importantly, military action took place mainly abroad and in the border provinces in northern and eastern France. All that was needed to break the seasonal cycle of agricultural production and therefore to seriously disrupt food supplies was an outbreak of an epizootic disease or an accident of climate. When drought destroyed pasture land, animals had to be prematurely slaughtered. A rainy, cold spring and summer threatened the ripening of cereals by rotting or rusting the ears, and a violent summer thunderstorm – often accompanied by hail – could flatten cereal crops. The climate became colder and especially wetter during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the famine of 1315–1316, rife north of the Loire, was indeed due to a bad harvest caused by atrocious weather. Sometimes resulting from a combination of the unpredictability of the weather and the devastation caused by heavily-armed soldiers, cereal crises reoccurred sporadically: for example, during the 1360–1370 period, around 1400, between 1425 and 1420, and around 1430. The late seventeenth century was likewise to pay a heavy price as a result of the climate disruptions of the ‘little ice age’ (Lachiver 1991). The population tried to avert the hardships of the time by turning to religion. Rogation processions were meant to help to obtain divine intervention to produce good cereal and grape harvests, and the prayer ‘De la peste, de la guerre, de la faim, délivre nous, seigneur’ (‘From the plague, war, and hunger, Lord, deliver us’) remained acutely relevant in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Recourse was also had to farming techniques in an attempt to limit the effects of fluctuating weather conditions. Winegrowers, for instance, planted different grape varieties with different growth patterns. However, too early a grape harvest resulted in an indiscriminate mixture of grapes that had not reached the same stage of ripeness, the wine thereby obtained being characterized by strong acidity, especially in the northern vineyards. Likewise, the coolness and dampness of northern France led winegrowers there to concentrate on white wine production. Similarly, several types of cereal crops were cultivated to limit the effects of bad weather, the varieties including spelt, wheat, barley, winter barley, oats, millet and sorghum. Bringing variety to the cereals sown increased the chances of ensuring a minimum yield at harvest time in the event of bad weather or bacterial attacks harmful to specific plants; furthermore, the inter-harvest period could be reduced by planting winter barley, which was harvested in June. Cereal growing was not a static, unchanging matter. The cultivation of spelt and emmer declined significantly respectively from the ninth and tenth centuries onwards, whereas that of wheat and oats became much more widespread respectively from the tenth and eleventh centuries. Wheat did extremely well during the periods of the great land clearances, especially since the aristocracy made it the subject of a feudal due. Wheat bread became the preserve of the elite of society and of the urban areas. The rapid economic expansion that took place in the countryside during the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries was marked not only by the greater emphasis on wheat and oats, but also by the growing success of maslin (or meslin), which was a mixture 138



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of wheat and rye. Maslin started to be cultivated in the ninth century and was also regarded as a guarantee against fluctuating weather conditions. Two kinds of cereal, usually wheat and rye, were sown in the same field, and later harvested together. The grains were then milled together into a flour, which produced a greyish-brown bread. As wheat and rye do not share the same rainfall requirements, the growing of maslin meant that more consistent yields could be expected. Rye itself was able to get established on poor, acid soils, as it was hardy and undemanding, as well as being resistant both to cold and drought. The final century of the medieval period saw the reappearance of buckwheat in western France (Nassiet, 1998). Although often categorized as a cereal, buckwheat (also called black wheat) is not a cereal, but a European polygonaceous plant of the same family as knotweed and therefore has the advantage of not suffering from those diseases, such as rye ergot, that attack cereals and thus diminish their yield of flour. Buckwheat provided a 75 per cent yield, which was almost as high as that of rye, and higher than that of barley and oats. Sown later in the year, in May and June, ‘cereals’ such as buckwheat and millet could act as ‘catch-up crops’. To complete the picture, mention must also be made of the advent of maize, a cereal that originated in America. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, it was cultivated only in south-western France. Another American plant, the potato, was strongly linked to the hardships of the time and to the issue of subsistence. Although it had been known since the mid-sixteenth century, it became established on the market only during periods of crisis and in waraffected regions, such as the Vosges, Lorraine, and Alsace in the seventeenth century. The return of a plentiful supply of grain very often resulted in the abandoning of this substitute foodstuff; significantly, the potato remained absent from the rich cerealgrowing regions. On a visit to Paris in 1698, the English doctor, Martin Lister, was said to have been surprised by the rareness of the American tuber. ‘At the market it is difficult to find potatoes; those healthy and nourishing roots which are such an important resource for the people of England’ (Lister, 1873: 138).

Compartmentalized economies Until the eighteenth century, the French economy remained predominantly compartmentalized. The movement of goods was impeded by the slowness of transport, poor road maintenance, and the irregular flow of the rivers. Rivers were important communication routes, and most French towns were situated on the banks of one. In winter, many roads were impassable; in summer, they were choked by wagoners and the beasts of burden needed for the all-important work of agriculture. The situation became even more difficult during periods of war, armed banditry, and civil unrest. Transport apart, the levying of the large number of tolls, customs, octrois (duty levied on various goods entering a town or city) and other seigneurial dues increased the price of foodstuffs and slowed down their circulation. As a result, there was no national market in which goods could freely circulate. Instead, there were many local markets, which were often seigneurial in origin, located close to one another, but largely ignoring each other’s existence. Even when bad harvests occurred, the movement of cereals between 139

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regions with a surplus and regions suffering from shortages was very poor, because the local inhabitants, including the local authorities, of areas enjoying a surplus did not like to see grain convoys leaving their particular locality. It was not until the final two centuries of the Ancien Régime that transport conditions in France’s interior finally improved. The digging of canals, such as that at Briare (1642), which linked the basins of the Seine and the Loire, made specialization in farming possible. For obvious reasons of food preservation, highly perishable foodstuffs could be drawn only from local producers, such as the market gardens that were located within and around towns. Cereals and grapes, two cultural crops that were essential both as food and to the Christian religion, were grown almost everywhere, whatever the local climate and soil conditions, with the exception of mountainous areas, where stock farming remained the main agricultural practice. Cereals were at the heart of the agricultural system, taking precedence over all other crops, as well as livestock farming. The land devoted to pasture was reduced so as allow more cereals to be grown – all the more necessary because of the low yields of cereal crops. In the poorest agricultural areas, only three or four grains were harvested for each one sown (6 hectolitres per hectare); in the richest, the yield was about eight grains for each one sown (15 hectolitres per hectare). The important thing was to guarantee the production of bled – old French for corn/wheat. During the period under review, bled referred to all grains, whether or not for use in bread making or for human or animal consumption, as well as to peas and beans. We should be wary of the pessimist view of history, which focuses attention on famines and food shortages, as French agriculture managed in normal circumstances to produce sufficient quantities of grain with which to feed the population. In the seventeenth century, within what are her present-day borders, France had 9 750 000 hectares under cereal cultivation. Taking an average yield of 8.5 hectolitres per hectare and a population of 22 million, an average harvest during the Grand Siècle (the seventeenth century of Louis XIII and Louis XIV) would be sufficient for 250 kilos of bread per person (including infants) per year, i.e. a daily intake of 700 grammes per person, quite apart from the consumption of chestnuts or spring cereals (Lachiver, 1991: 37). However, losing out most to this cereal-based agricultural system was livestock farming – of cattle, certainly, but especially of pigs (extensive land clearance reduced the area of woodland, where pigs liked to feed) – the exception being sheep farming, which benefited from the ‘cerealization’ of the economy (‘Pays à blé, pays à moutons’ or ‘Wheat-growing area, sheep-farming area’) and the rapid expansion of the wool trade. The consumption of cereals suitable for bread making meant that it was necessary to build and maintain expensive technical equipment, such as mills and ovens. Flour for daily bread-making had to be produced locally, and this explains the increase in the number of mills in both town and country during the medieval and early modern periods. Watermills had been known since before the year 1000, but historians observe a marked increase from the eleventh century in archival references to them, and it seems that they abounded along the banks of rivers in the twelfth century. The windmill appeared in the late twelfth century in France (1180 in Normandy), and became really widespread during the thirteenth. The quality of the millstone determined the 140



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quality of the flour, but for a long time nearness to a quarry took precedence over the stone’s actual physical properties (Belmont, 2006). This resulted in an enormous variety of millstone quality right across the kingdom and especially in a flour that was all too often full of mineral fragments, a problem that caused both digestive and dental problems. In the most favoured areas, such as the Paris Basin, the use of local millstones nevertheless declined in favour of better-quality millstones as the Middle Ages progressed; these were quarried on an industrial scale and were supplied to a single or, indeed, several provinces. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, millstones from the Brie region even reached England, where they were called ‘French stones’. These were quarried mainly at la Ferté-sous-Jouarre in the Brie region, but quarries producing this superior-quality millstone for flour milling were also to be found in Touraine, Périgord, and Poitou. This switch to millstones of better quality got really under way in the seventeenth century, and led to a distinct improvement in the quality of the bread produced in France, besides squaring with the spread, even in the countryside, of the consumption of wheaten bread. In addition to the need to produce flour locally, the expansion of the mill is also linked to the rapid increase of the seigneurie (feudal lordship). As millers were more often than not seigneurial agents, they had a bad reputation, not only because they levied the milling tax, but also because they cheated on the flour’s weight and quality. Except in the case of people professionally engaged in food production and of aristocratic residences, the possession of an oven was rare. In the country, depending on the vigour of the local feudal lord and the village community, bread could be baked in the communal village oven or in the bannal oven in return for the payment of a fee to the local lord; bread was rarely baked in an individual bread oven adjoining the house. In the towns and cities, the dough could be taken to a baker to be baked, just as meals could be taken to roast-meat sellers, victuallers or pastry cooks, to be cooked in return for payment. It should be noted that cereals were consumed not only in the form of leavened bread baked in the oven, but also in the form of a more or less thick gruel, which enabled savings to be made in the cost – whether in money, in kind, or in time – of bread making, and avoided having to go to the miller. The cereals were simply crushed in rudimentary mortars by the women and then cooked over the hearth. Moreover, everyone, from children to the elderly, could eat gruel, which could be made with all types of cereal, including barley, oats, millet and buckwheat (black wheat), with the addition of various other foodstuffs, such as peas, lentils, and vetches, and even butter and honey, if required. Cereals were also eaten as galettes (savoury pancakes) of varying thickness. In the northern margins of the kingdom, a home-brewed beer thickened by the addition of vegetables was similar to gruel. It is likely that the consumption of gruel and galettes started to decline in France from the eighteenth century on, initiating, in those areas that were to retain their particular food specialities, a regionalization of a cuisine that was previously more widespread geographically. The slow and expensive methods of transport also led to wine being produced as close as possible to the places of consumption and places of exchange, and so the majority of medieval vineyards were located along rivers and near towns and cities. The vine experienced its maximum geographical expansion in the thirteenth century, 141

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with a northern limit in northern Brittany, Normandy, and Flanders (Valenciennes), very near the English Channel. Wine did not travel well, as its alcohol content was low, and new wine had to be drunk quickly, because it soon turned sour. In addition, the price of wine was fixed according to its quantity on the market and not according to its quality, at least until the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, the deagriculturalization of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries marked the beginning of the slow retreat of vineyards in northern France, especially in Picardy, Normandy, and Brittany. The retreat of the vine was to the advantage of beer in the north and cider in the north-west. Although medieval sources sometimes mention pommé, a drink made from crushed crab apples soaked in water, there is no real reference to cider in its present-day sense until the sixteenth century in Normandy, Upper Brittany, and Maine. From the last third of the sixteenth century on, the making of cider by pressing selected varieties of cultivated apples was sufficiently well-established in Normandy – particularly in the Cotentin Peninsula, the Pays d’Auge and the Pays de Caux – to be the subject of the first French treatise on the drink, De vino et pomaceo (1588), by the doctor, Julien Le Paulmier (1520–1588). From Normandy, the cider-apple tree continued to gain ground during the early modern period: towards the west, in Brittany; towards the east, in the Vexin and in Picardy (second half of the seventeenth century); and in the countryside of the Paris region (eighteenth century). However, cider remained a drink of the poor and peasants, and was far-removed from the positive up-market image enjoyed by wine, in comparison with which beer also suffered. Flanders was the only French region to have a real beer-based culture, where basic home-brewed beer coexisted with that made in and marketed by the breweries, which offered several qualities of hopped beer. The hop was used from the fifteenth century on to preserve beer and at the same time to give it a bitter taste. Beer was consumed mainly in France’s northern provinces, where cheap wine was unavailable, as well as in the ports that traded with English, Flemish, and Dutch sailors. There is evidence of beer being available in the Breton ports from the end of the sixteenth century on (in seventeenth-century Nantes, beer was twice as cheap as cider and six times cheaper than wine), but the Breton peasants largely ignored it as being staot kazeg, or ‘mare’s piss’ (Croix, 1981: 837–838)! A particular market suffering from the bad transport conditions was that for sea fish (la marée). It depended upon the weather conditions at sea, the state of overland communication routes (very bad), the type of fish transported – fresh sardines, plentiful along the Atlantic coast, remained absent from the interior of the country – and the ambient temperature. Because of the obvious difficulties of preservation, the increases in temperature in spring and particularly in summer reduced the area that could be supplied with fresh sea fish. The situation in Paris, which was studied by Reynald Abad in 2002, can be taken as an example. The capital was dependent on chiefly the Channel ports between the Seine and the Somme, the most important of which was Dieppe, the nearest fishing port to the capital. The highly perishable nature of fresh fish transformed the sea-fish trade into a veritable race against time once the actual fishing was done. As soon as the fish were unloaded in the ports, wholesale fish-merchants 142



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Illustration 5.2  A fish market on a quay, a woman buying eels from a stall, c. 1648–1664, pen and grey ink and grey wash on paper by Albert Flamen

bought, washed, packed, and then loaded them, according to type, size, and quality, into baskets carried by pack-animals or on wagons that were driven throughout the night and day, by wholesale fishmongers to the place of consumption. The fastest from the main ports of supply, took about twenty hours to get to the Parisian market. Fresh sea fish arrived at about three in the morning at the wholesale market, the Halle à la marée, and was sold at auction to female retail fishmongers (the retail fish trade was a female activity in Paris), to the suppliers of the great houses, and to the stewards of the religious establishments, according to the order of arrival of the wholesale fishmongers. Those who arrived last were therefore forced to sell their fish at rock-bottom prices, especially as, between Easter and Saint Remy’s Day (15 January), fish had to be sold on the same day in an effort to preserve its freshness. From mid-January to the end of Lent, on the other hand, sea fish could be offered for sale on two consecutive days. Except for people who lived near the coast, fresh sea fish remained expensive and out of reach for the vast majority of the population, especially as town taxes were also added to the packaging and transport costs.

The effects of the farming calendar and the religious calendar on the market The presence of various foodstuffs in the markets was dependent upon the farming and Church calendars. Although the New Testament lifted the dietary restrictions stipulated by the Old Testament, the Church imposed obligatory dietary restrictions on the faithful, the consumption of meat and products of animal origin being, as a 143

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rule, forbidden for about 150 days a year. These dietary restrictions stemmed from the medieval period, but were forcefully reaffirmed by the Catholic Church of the CounterReformation. These religious dictates had two major consequences on the agro-food market, i.e. in the expansion of the fish trade and of fish consumption – archaeologists have found large amounts of fish remains in medieval and early modern strata - and the seasonal concentration of meat and fish sales. The alternation of the days when meat could not be eaten and the days when it could set the year’s rhythm of a trade in which fish consumption reached a peak in Lent (March-April). Summer grazing on both fallow land and harvested cereal fields made it possible to feed large flocks of sheep – especially lambs born in spring to be sold in summer – on the cereal-growing plains. Late summer and early autumn were therefore periods when there was plenty of mutton, particularly because autumn sowing on fallow land and the costs of fattening-up sheep in sheep-folds made a sharp reduction in the number of sheep necessary. Come the lambing season at the end of winter, and numbers were replenished, permitting the sale of sucking lambs for Easter; there was even a speculative market for lambs born very early in the season between Christmas and the beginning of Lent. With the purchase of more sheep in June, flocks expanded and the grazing season began (Moriceau, 1994: 382–383). For its part, the supply of calves obviously depended on the biological rhythm of cows and on farming customs. Cows were traditionally mated with bulls during summer, giving birth in spring, between March and June. Calves were eaten at between four weeks (sucking calves) and six months (killing calves), with the market being particularly well-supplied between May and August, the number of head decreasing thereafter during autumn and winter. Beef, on the other hand, could be eaten throughout the year, as beef cattle were fattened up either on pasture land (grass cattle), or in cowsheds, where they were fed hay (Abad, 2002). Pork production remained very uneven, as the pig-rearing cycle meant that there was plenty of pork in winter but a shortage of it in summer. In autumn and winter, pigs were fattened on oak, beech and chestnut mast, on so-called ‘inferior grains’, such as barley, oats, rye and buckwheat, and on bran, equally abundant late in the year. Spring and summer, however, were not good for pig keeping, as pigs did not fatten on pasture land. In a society which was badly affected by the structural shortage of animal fats, it was quite natural that the pig was slaughtered when it was at its fattest, so as to provide the best quality bacon and the largest quantity of lard. In the French countryside, the slaughtering (tuaille –an activity in which not all peasant families engaged) took place in winter, between Christmas and the beginning of Lent, mainly in January and February, as this time of year corresponded to the peak of the animal’s fattening cycle. It is also possible to see in this a pragmatic utilization of winter weather conditions, which were better-suited to the preparation and preservation of the pig’s meat than those of summer, with its drought and flies, or autumn, with its general dampness. It also offered a change from the normal frugal fare of winter, all the while respecting the religious calendar of fat days, when meat could be consumed. Except on religious feast-days, the consumption of fresh meat was rare in the countryside during the early modern period. 144



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Food preservation The compartmentalization of markets, the slowness of transport, the unpredictability of harvests and the uncertainty of future food supplies meant that it was vitally important that food could be stored. The fact that cereals, legumes and chestnuts could be stored partly explains their prominent place in the daily diet of the past. In order to reduce the putrefaction, fermentation, and decomposition of other foodstuffs, the population also used a variety of food preservation processes, such as drying (especially for fruit), but mainly salting. Salt destroyed germs and bacteria, and thus was essential for preserving meat, particularly pork. Meat could also be salted and smoked – sometimes only smoked over the hearth – and could be dried in the open air. In order to preserve it and, above all, be able to transport it large distances from the production areas, sea fish had also to undergo drying, salting or smoking, or a combination of these. From the Middle Ages, the main fish caught and processed along the coasts of the North Sea and the English Channel was the herring. It was gutted at sea, rapidly being packed into barrels (caques), along with some salt. Once landed, it was removed from the barrels, washed, rinsed in tanks of fresh water, and then carefully ranged in barrels, between layers of salt. At Dieppe, Boulogne, and especially Calais, barrelled herring could also be kept in vats of brine for several weeks or months. Soaked in vats of water to remove the salt and allowed to drip off, the herring was then slit open from head to tail and the backbone removed. The resulting fillets were hung in a chimney or a kiln for thirty-six hours above a smouldering fire to be smoked, a process that preserved the product – the smoked herring or ‘kipper’ – for longer (Hocquet, 2005). Cod, which had been fished for off the coast of Newfoundland since the early sixteenth century, was preserved by drying or salting. Dried cod was a quality product, widely consumed in Catholic Europe, and its production was a speciality of the people of Saint-Malo. Cod was caught inshore, the fishing being organized around fixed bases on the Newfoundland coast. Every morning during the season, men set off with rod and line in rowing boats, returning with the fish to the quaysides every evening. The cod was then gutted, decapitated, cut in two, and salted. Two or three days later, the cod fillets were washed, drained, and put out on pebbles to dry in the sun for several weeks. At the end of the fishing season, the dried cod was stored in the ships’ holds while waiting to be unloaded in the ports of Europe. Salted cod, also called ‘green cod’, was not appreciated by consumers as much as dried cod. It was prepared at sea, the cod, on being caught, being immediately put with salt into barrels (Lespagnol, 1997: 235–285). In Brittany, conger eel, once caught, was gutted, salted using salt from the nearby salt marshes, and then hung on ropes along the rocky shore to be dried in the sun and wind. There was a wide choice of preserved fish, including anchovies, mackerel, salmon, conger eel (salted) and tuna (pickled), and even some freshwater fish, such as eel and trout (salted). In the interior of France, oysters from Brittany and Normandy, shucked and preserved in barrels of brine, were used in sauces, soups and or stuffings. However, the bulk of sea food consumed was salted or smoked herring – one of the rare fish on the market to which town-dwellers had access – and dried or salted cod. 145

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Processing milk into butter and cheese served to preserve it for longer. Butter-making was woman’s work and was done in the home; it was also women who were responsible for selling butter at local markets. The cream was separated from the milk and then churned in a ribot or ribotte (butter churn), where it turned into butter, releasing lait ribot (buttermilk), which was consumed by the household. All French regions to the north of the Loire produced and consumed butter (also supplemented by lard in the Paris and Lorraine regions). Only in Brittany was it considered to be a cultural foodstuff (Croix, 1981: 829–831). In addition to being an important cattle-farming region, Brittany, which was exempted from the gabelle or salt tax, enjoyed plentiful supplies of cheap salt, and so butter production became increasingly important, to the detriment of cheese production, which was so important in the neighbouring province of Normandy. Salted butter would keep for several months, formed part of the food supplies on board ships, and could also be exported, in spite of the slowness of transport. In the seventeenth century, salted Breton butter was reaching the ports of La Rochelle and Bordeaux, and even Paris. Butter of various qualities was made, with certain butters enjoying an excellent reputation on the market. Such a butter was that of La Prévalaye, just outside the gates of Rennes, which enjoyed a reputation for quality from at least the sixteenth century. It is true to say that, in Brittany, butter was a basic foodstuff and not a mere cooking fat; it was consumed in the towns as much as in the countryside, and as much by the privileged as by the working classes. Butter was eaten on bread and galettes (savoury buckwheat pancakes), it was an accompaniment to meat and fish, and it was added as the last touch to soup or to oat or buckwheat porridge. Salt was also used in cheese-making and sometimes in the cheese-maturing process. Soft cheeses did not keep as long as hard cheeses, and did not travel as well, either. Hard cheeses could also come from abroad (Holland and Switzerland, for example) or from the mountainous areas of France. The Jura Mountains saw the development – from at least the thirteenth century – of fruitières (the special name for cheese dairies in Savoy and the Jura), of which there were 239 in 1688 and 293 in the late eighteenth century. Milk producers joined forces in order to be able to make large wheels of up to about 20 kg of a hard cheese called vachelin or vacherin, which was the predecessor of Comté cheese (Moriceau, 2005: 197–198).

5.2  Food supply circuits Any discussion of food supplies from the year 1000 to the 1750s comes down to the reassertion, even as regards the eighteenth century, of the place and relevance of the gift and of subsistence on the consumption of one’s own produce in the face of the development of the market. That development was stimulated by rapid urban and demographic expansion, and by the early modern State’s taxation requirements, which from the fifteenth century were linked particularly to the formation and maintenance of a permanent army. The taille, which was the principal direct tax levied by the monarchy on commoners, became permanent in 1439 and was a royal tax that, nota bene, was paid in money and not in kind. 146



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The gift and counter-gift economy Many gifts consisted of food and drink. Country-dwellers and town-dwellers, peasants and lords, towns and religious communities all practised the giving of foodstuffs. This custom could be linked, for example, to religious festivals, to the administration of the sacraments, to the human life cycle, to the conclusion of contracts (hence a pot de vin – a bribe or backhander), to the giving and receiving of help during important periods of farm work, and to welcoming a very important person. The gift must therefore be considered not only from its economic aspect – as a way of facilitating the circulation of goods – but also from the social and political viewpoints. Far from having been supplanted by the market economy in the early modern period, ‘gift exchange persists as an essential relational mode, a repertoire of behaviour, a register with its own rules, language, etiquette, and gestures’ (Zemon Davis, 2003: 19). The gift enabled the sweetening of relationships between people of the same or different status within a society marked by endemic violence. It oiled the wheels of social relationships, helped family and customers to remain in contact, and contributed to the maintenance of friendship (in the sense of being on good terms) between neighbours. Above all, the gift helped to give material expression to confidence, good faith, and loyalty during matrimonial, economic, and political transactions. The social status of the giver and the receiver had to be scrupulously respected. The fact that a gift had been received was also essential, because the public acceptance of the gift meant that the message had been understood. As the anthropologist Marcel Mauss, emphasized in his book, Essai sur le Don (About the Gift, 1925), the gift calls for the counter-gift, with the reciprocity being the completion of this social recognition. The presents offered by towns and cities during royal visits or the welcoming of dignitaries had therefore to display public recognition of a superior social position, but also had to reflect the distinctiveness of the local identity. In 1568, for example, the city of Metz offered Charles IX and Catherine de Medici a gift of candied mirabelle plums. The cost of the cane sugar and the sweet pleasure of the dessert marked the aristocratic prestige of the donees, whereas the mirabelle underlined the donor’s Lorraine identity.

The ideal of subsistence on the consumption of one’s own produce Whether it concerned the peasantry, the ecclesiastical communities, or the bourgeois and aristocratic elites, subsistence on the consumption of one’s own produce remained both an economic reality and an ideal. For the peasantry, mixed subsistence farming, even when it was waning, was a matter of economic survival. For those members of the elites, whether by birth or wealth, it was also a question of social survival, as it was the display of a lifestyle linked to the ownership of property. In the case of ecclesiastical communities, it was a return to the very spirit of monastic rules. Even if the peasantry could not do without the market to purchase grain, salt or manufactured products, for example, and to obtain the cash that was needed to pay the royal taxes, subsistence farming remained the best way of life. It was important, because it meant that the food supply could be controlled and guaranteed, as was 147

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Illustration 5.3  Frontispiece of Nicolas de ­Bonnefons, Les délices de la ­campagne, Paris, 1654

symbolized by the garden, since, as its etymology shows, the function of the French potager (vegetable garden) was to supply vegetables for the cooking pot. In this very special enclosed plot of land, which could be well-manured and irrigated, and which benefited from daily human care and attention, were cultivated fruit trees, vine stocks, vegetables, aromatic herbs, and even cereals. What became of the garden crops, eggs, and farmyard poultry, or indeed the milk from the few cows, whether these latter were owned or rented? A proportion reached 148



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the local market, to be sold for much-needed hard cash, and another proportion went to pay seigneurial dues in kind. It is, however, certain that a (large?) proportion avoided both these fates, thereby providing food for the gift culture, and, above all, for the family table. The peasantry consumed the produce that could not be sold in the towns, and if there were no fattened capon and thick cream to grace that table, at least there was the rather tough old hen to eat and whey to drink – and perhaps even a little more. The picking of fruit and wild berries in the woods also played its part in this subsistence economy. Near rivers and the coast, fish and shellfish, too, finished up in the pot. Bourrides (sea fish stew), mouclades (mussels), as well as pochouses (freshwater fish stews) made up many different local varieties of country soup. Although the sources do not permit actual quantification of households’ consumption of their own produce, it is agreed that this last helped to add variety to the monotony of the cereal-based peasant diet (Quellier, 2008). This type of consumption was generally associated with the rural world, and is widely underestimated in studies on urban food supply. ‘How can one not have some misgivings about studying the subject of the elusive supplying of the towns, since, by definition, it escapes any type of direct measurement and all quantitative sources? Nevertheless, this appears to be of the utmost importance in many respects’ (Cocula, 1985: 231); of the utmost importance, as the links between town and country remained so particularly numerous. Many town-dwellers had links with the countryside, whether in the case of the wealthier upper classes, through property, or, in the case of humbler folk, through members of their family who had stayed in the village. These links were all the stronger, because urban growth was possible only on account of the steady movement of people from the countryside into the towns; in the early modern period, there was, too, a marked expansion of bourgeois-owned property around the towns. In addition, towns benefited greatly from the payment, partly in kind, of ground rent, in consequence of the aristocracy’s desire to live in towns and cities, the purchase of land and seigneuries by the urban bourgeoisie, and the establishment in urban areas of the great ecclesiastical landowners. These rural connections were given material expression through the provision of fruit, vegetables, wine, and grain, with these foodstuffs initially avoiding the markets: for example, the owners of seigneurial and ground rents in kind took direct delivery of that share of the cereal harvests due to them, passing it on to the bakers who worked for them; only the cereal not earmarked for their own consumption was sold. Not to be neglected, either, was the presence of market gardens, aristocratic and ecclesiastical vineyards, and vegetable and fruit gardens within the urban fabric. The products of urban animal- and poultry-rearing must also be taken into account – from the farmyard to the rabbit hutch and the pigsty – and there were also the fish from the rivers that flowed through or alongside a town. For the elites of wealth and birth, many documents give a glimpse of the practice of consumption of this sort. Even in tenant-farming regions, such as the countryside around Paris, money was not the sole form of rent payment, as the payment in kind of a bit extra could be provided for in tenancy contracts. Nevertheless, the contribution of such consumption was, of course, much more distinct in the métayage (sharecropping) regions, such as the country areas in western France. During the first half of 149

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the eighteenth century, for example, the Laval cloth merchant, Pierre Duchemin du Tertre, received each year from his métayage farms butter, cider, fruit (apples, pears, and quinces), chestnuts, geese, hens, and a lamb at Easter (Antoine, 1998). Furthermore, many seigneurial dues were paid in kind, and so cereals, milk, butter, eggs, cheese, poultry, and fish could reach the seigneurial table, thereby reducing food bills, and, above all, giving material expression to the master of the house’s status. Subsistence on the consumption of one’s own produce was therefore far from automatically being a mark of poverty or the sign of an archaic economy; on the contrary, it was undeniably a societal solution. For the elites, it originated in the notion of good husbandry, which is not only economic, but also cultural. The consumption of their own property’s produce by people who had the means to buy at market shows that, far from being the inevitable consequence of market compartmentalization and a response by default to an archaic structure, such consumption could also be a reasoned choice of a means of supply that was supposed to ensure, in respect of certain foodstuffs, quantity, quality, and social status.

The rapid expansion of the market economy The urban growth of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, and then of the early modern period, boosted the importance of the market in the supplying of food to the people of France. The increasing tax burden and the growing portion of rents and seigneurial dues paid in cash also encouraged the peasants to take their produce to market. The historian, Marcel Lachiver, has even suggested that the winegrower did not consume his own first wine, which was saved for the market, but made do with the unsaleable second wine, most probably because he had to have money with which to buy cereals (Lachiver, 1982). A supply area’s location and size depended on the demographic and political importance of population density, on the economic, diplomatic, military, and climatic situation, on the significant fluctuations of the cereal and grape harvests, and on the foodstuffs that were in demand. These two last factors also depended on the nature of the area, on the energy and resourcefulness of peasantries able or not to develop an ‘alternative agriculture’ (Thirsk, 1997), and on transport limitations. As a highly variable feature in both time and space, the market extended from offering what the (very) local market-gardening belt produced to offering in addition exotic spices from faraway places during the Middle Ages and to produce from the distant ‘sugar islands’ (West Indies) during the Ancien Régime. Since von Thünen’s ground-breaking work, economists, geographers, and historians have become accustomed to modelling urban supply in terms of concentric rings of agricultural activity around a town, a centre of consumption. Naturally, transportation routes, topographical irregularities and the proximity of other urban centres modified this model on the ground; moreover, von Thünen’s model could not be applied to certain specific foodstuffs, such as sea fish and sea salt, or, indeed, to wine, because of obvious geographical restrictions. Nevertheless, the general conclusion of Jean-Claude Perrot’s study devoted to eighteenth-century Caen – which has become a classic of 150



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historiography – is that this model of closely interlocking zones is relevant for a city with a population of a little over 30 000. Caen’s market-gardening area was within only a very short radius of the city, because the market-gardeners had to be able to get into the city on foot within the hours of morning. From the valley of the Seulle to the west to that of the Dives to the east, and from the English Channel to the north to the Cinglais forest to the south-east, Caen’s cereal supply hinterland covered an area of 667 km² (Perrot, 1975). For the majority of small and medium-sized towns, the bulk of the cereal supply was provided from the local countryside. In the late seventeenth century, the 20 000 inhabitants of Nancy obtained their cereal supply from two of Lorraine’s richest breadbaskets, the Vermois and the Xaintois. The neighbouring fairs in Vézelise and Champigneulles provided Nancy with beef cattle, and wine came from the vineyards of Metz, the Toul area, the Barrois, Alsace, Burgundy, and the Arbois (Cabourdin, 1975). In the case of Paris, the model seems to be less evident, even if a market-gardening belt, vineyards, and a cereal-growing basin were to be found around the city. As Reynald Abad has demonstrated in his book Le grand marché, Paris had recourse to provinces throughout the entire kingdom for its supplies of meat, fish, fruit, and vegetables, albeit in very unequal measure, as the major contributions of the Île-de-France or Normandy could not possibly be compared with the trivial contributions of Béarn or Roussillon (Abad, 2002). The capital’s overwhelming demographic importance accounted for this exceptional nationwide market. In and around Paris was to be found a discontinuous horticultural belt (Kleindienst, 1963; Quellier, 2003), a first supply area that was marked by the producers selling direct, without, however, totally ignoring the middlemen. The normal cereal supply area was more compact in area, covering a minimum of a dozen present-day departments, though it expanded in bad harvests years when the net for the precious gain was thrown wider. The rich cereal-growing plateaus of the centre of the Paris Basin (Pays-de-France, Multien, Hurepoix, Beauce, Brie, and Valois) as well as Picardy, Artois, the Cambrésis, and the Pays de Caux, formed the capital’s normal breadbasket for wheat. The beef supply area was customarily organized between the stock-breeding regions, such as Poitou, Brittany, and the northern Massif Central, and the stock-fattening regions, such as the Pays d’Auge, the Pays de Bray, and Charolais. Beef cattle were driven overland to Poissy and Sceaux, the capital’s two great cattle markets. Sheep came from the cereal-growing areas around Paris. Table wine, lastly, was produced by vineyards in the Paris region, but also particularly by those of the Loire, the Orleans and the Blois regions, Champagne and lower Burgundy, especially the Auxerre region. For obvious geographical reasons, salt could not be produced everywhere in the kingdom. A long coastline and optimal climatic conditions enabled France to extract salt from the salt marshes not only for her internal markets, but also for northern Europe, the Swiss cantons, and the German states. From the Middle Ages onwards, salt was one of the French economy’s basic products, along with wine and cereals. From the first half of the fourteenth century, royal power established a lucrative tax (the gabelle), which covered the extraction, transport, and sale of salt. The bulk of France’s sea-salt production was divided between three important centres of activity, of which 151

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two were on the Atlantic coast and one on the Mediterranean coast. The Saintonge coast, the île de Ré and the Île d’Oléron supplied Limousin, the Marche, Auvergne, Périgord, Quercy, the Agenais, and the Bordeaux region. Brittany, and especially the salt marshes of Guérande and Bourgneuf Bay, supplied the Île-de-France, Normandy and Champagne. Lastly, eastern Languedoc supplied the Languedoc, the Midi, the Forez, the Lyonnais, the Mâconnais, and the Rouergue. The later annexation of the Franche-Comté (1661) and then Lorraine (1766) meant that, for the first time, significant amounts of rock salt could be extracted in France (Hocquet, 1984 and 2005). Finally, countries outside France also contributed to the supplying of foodstuffs to French towns and cities, of whatever economic, political, or demographic importance, also obtained foodstuffs from abroad. From northern Europe came smoked herrings (kippers), salmon, and salted meat. From the shores of the Mediterranean came citrus fruit, olive oil, wine, and dried fruit, such as raisins and figs. There was, too, a long history of spice importing, a high-added-value trade that, during the Middle Ages, provided African and especially Asian spices, such as cardamom from south-east Asia, galanga (ginger family) from China, cloves from the Moluccas (Indonesia), nutmeg from the Banda Islands (Indonesia) and round and long peppers, ginger, and cinnamon from the Indian sub-continent (Laurioux, 2002). Saffron could be cultivated in France, as well as in Spain. Beginning in the seventeenth century, a new style of French cuisine turned away from spices in favour of native seasoning ingredients, and both French cuisine and the French economy benefited to the full from the sugar boom, which resulted from the acclimatization of sugar cane in the New World and the associated development of the plantation economy. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, sugar cane left the field of medicine for that of the kitchen, and the apothecary’s shop for the grocer’s. Sugar cane was the key component in the fashion for jams, which was linked to a very keen interest in the fruit and vegetable garden, and the multiplicity of desserts and other sweet titbits served to the privileged classes at the end of a meal or during light meals or snacks. Increasing amounts of sugar cane were imported in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. During the eighteenth, France became the world’s leading sugar producer, thanks to her possessions in the West Indies. Official sugar production on the island of Santo Domingo alone was estimated at 7 000 tons in 1715, 43 000 tons in 1767 and over 86 0000 tons on the eve of the French Revolution (Meyer, 1989: 145). From the major French ports, where sugar refineries could be set up, this production was partly re-exported to northern Europe, and particularly to England, whose population was particularly fond of sugar. There is, though, no doubting that the proportion of French people who had access to sweet things increased in the final century of the Ancien Régime. Sugar was also used to sweeten three exotic drinks that made their appearance in France during the first half of the seventeenth century: chocolate, tea, and coffee. Only coffee really succeeded in becoming established in urban eating and drinking habits, including those of the working classes. Perhaps because it was over-burdened with the notion of ‘Spanishness’, chocolate remained a very marginal, aristocratic drink. Tea seemed to be consumed in only a few port towns during the eighteenth century, but quite another destiny awaited coffee. In France, coffee appeared in Marseilles in 1644, 152



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and reached the French court in the 1670s. The first cafés were opened in Paris between 1670 and 1680, but it was particularly during the eighteenth century that coffee became a popular everyday drink in the towns and cities, and, as the early morning drink that was drunk on waking up, it even began to spread throughout the country areas. All these exotic foodstuffs arrived in France through ports such as Le Havre, Rouen, Nantes and Bordeaux, which had the advantage of being on the Atlantic coast, and Marseille. From the local countryside around France’s urban areas ‘the world economy’, the geography of the supply areas testifies to the diversity of the food available in the towns, even if the quantity, quality, and variety of purchases were, of course, dependent on the consumer’s social position. It should also be noted that in periods of high prices, only the urban areas, or at least the ports, Paris, and those towns which had a grain store, could hope for any succour. Whether it was during the great seasonal fairs, at the markets, or in street stalls, the sale of foodstuffs did not escape fraudulent practices. These practices have been studied using normative sources, especially municipal bye-laws and guild regulations, the investigation concentrating on issues relating to the policing of the urban food supply and food-related fears (Ferrières, 2002). Seigneurial, municipal, and royal authorities were interested in the trade of meat, fish, wine, and cereals for reasons of not just taxation, but also of politics, as the supply of these foodstuffs was particularly sensitive from the standpoint of public law and order (risk of rioting) and equally from that of the health of the population. Four major types of agro-food market fraud existed in the Middle Ages and in the early modern period: food doctoring or adulteration, cheating as regards weight, false description of the quality of goods, and prior agreements between merchants in order to fix and maintain high prices. Fraud was aimed at concealing the adulteration or deterioration of food products in cases where, for example, perishable foods had suffered from the slowness of transport or when they had been on sale for too long a period. Dishonest tradesmen could also try to cheat on the quality of a foodstuff by artificially improving its appearance: for example, by using chalk to make fish whiter; by making false saffron from yellow herbs or from meat fibres cooked a little longer than normal and coloured so as to look like the stigmas of the crocus flower; by making butter yellower through mixing it with marigold flowers so as to resemble the colour of spring butter; and by making wine redder and thicker through adding elderberries or blackberries to it. Dried-up meat was soaked in water so as to deceive customers as to its thickness and freshness, and meat that was too lean was made to look thicker by using little bellows, or even the mouth, to blow air inside it. Meat fat enabled defects to be hidden and meat of doubtful freshness to look glistening and appetising. Eel’s blood was used in the same way to treat fish that was no longer very fresh. Lying about a foodstuff ’s geographical place of origin meant that the customer could be misled as to its quality. The geographical designation of a product’s origin was used as a way of indicating to customers that a certain foodstuff was of good quality, as borne witness to by the cris de Paris (Cries of Paris) from as early as the thirteenth century. The authorities, like the consumers, were not entirely powerless in the face of these illicit practices. The regulations of the guilds and inspectors make constant reference 153

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to the principle of market dependability, i.e. working with professional honesty and acting with uprightness according to the law. Commercial trustworthiness is a theme of theological thinking and medieval morality that is notably present in the thirteenth-century writings of Thomas Aquinas, and is also touched on in the debate on the setting of fair prices. The organization of the markets and their sales operations attempted to combat these different types of fraud. The good and trustworthy product had to be easy to see in daylight, and not concealed by a cloth or lit up by artificial light, and the sale had to be public. With the exception of prostitutes and Jews, who were thought to cause contamination symbolically harmful, purchasers could touch and feel the products, and even sometimes taste them, as was the case with wine and oil. Were there any doubt, they could ask for an inspector to intervene. The urban market was supervised by the authority responsible for economic policing, which could be the local lord, the guilds, the town council, or the intendant of police. The methods used by the inspector (who was variously called regardaire, regardeur, eswardeur, maître des victuailles, maître d’abondance, expert juré, or expert municipal) to check food quality were the same as those used by consumers, i.e. listening, looking, smelling, touching, and tasting. If an offence were committed, pecuniary fines could be imposed and fraudulent goods confiscated, burnt, buried, or thrown in the river. As such goods were considered to be unfit for sale, the food thus seized could also be distributed to the poor.

Clandestine markets Alongside the gift, consumption of one’s own produce, and the market, there existed a fourth supply channel, that of clandestine activities, such as poaching. We know about poaching, thanks to parish constable’s regulations, the ban on maintaining holes in hedges, search operations to put the means of poaching out of commission, and cases brought before the courts. In Lorraine, Duke Leopold attempted to energetically fight against those people who in ‘a deadlier hidden hunt […] set their nets, snares, and traps, especially woodcutters, charcoal burners, woodmen, reapers, and harvesters’. He repeated the traditional ban ‘on removing and destroying the nests of grouse, partridges, quails, and on the taking of small leverets’ (17/04/1698) (Cabourdin, 1984: 214). The poaching of fish in rivers, lakes, and ponds was also common. The searches carried out between 1724 and 1754 by Chambord’s capitainerie (game wardens) in the homes of people suspected of poaching brought to light pieces of salted boar in pots, butchered venison, venison and wild duck cooked in the oven, salted red pheasants, and game pâtés, to name but a few items. When organized, game smuggling even fed a lucrative market, which was carried on clandestinely in the dimly-lit backs of shops and in some inn kitchens. The Chambord estate supplied game caught through this illegal activity to the markets of Bracieux and Blois (Salvadori, 1996: 277–305). The agro-food markets also came into contact with other contraband, such as smuggled salt on which the gabelle on its transport and sale had not been paid (fauxsaunage – illicit salt-making), or meat smuggled during Lent. Royal legislation to regulate Lent appeared at the moment when France was teetering on the brink of 154



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the Wars of Religion. In 1549, Henri II asked ‘butchers, roast-meat sellers, poultry sellers, and retailers’ not to ‘display for sale to the public during Lent any meat from slaughtered animals, poultry, or game’ and, in 1565, Charles IX extended the ban to ‘all persons of whatever quality they may be’ (Belmas, 1997). Nevertheless, a clandestine meat trade did exist in Lent, and eighty-two cases of such offences between 1658 and 1714 have been found in Lyon’s legal archives by Anne Montenach. The quantities of contraband meat seized varied from a few pounds to several whole animals, with this illegal trade taking place in the back of shops, in private houses, or in inns (Montenach, 2001). In the case of the theft of food, the legal archives reveal that it concerned urban and rural France in equal measure. Paris’ legal archives for the eighteenth century contain evidence of the theft of all sorts of foodstuffs, including grain (wheat, oats, and barley), bread and brioches, pâtés, bacon, ham, poultry (hens, fattened chickens, turkeys, ducks, capons, and geese), rabbits and pigeons, eggs, cheese and butter, fish, apricots, peaches, pears, grapes, cherries and raspberries, cabbages, lettuces, green beans, leeks, chives, melons, sugar, and alcohol and wines (Farge, 1974). In urban areas, where the tempting sight, sound or smell of food was always close at hand, the theft of food, such as a piece of bacon or a few leeks, was generally of little importance. Thieves would stealthily take a bit of food lying directly within arm’s reach from a market stall, in the street, or from plots of land that were badly (if at all) enclosed, and would then attempt to take advantage of the crowds and congestion to disappear. These crimes were really survival tactics, as they were a response to hunger and need, the offenders, when arrested, pleading poverty and appealing to Christian charity. In the cities, the theft of foodstuffs was linked to a population of workers, unskilled labourers, and pedlars without a plot of cultivable land having insufficient food to live on. In the town, as in the country, food theft was linked chiefly to people made vulnerable by the economic situation; the part played by women and children in it was far from negligible, as women were culturally linked to food and children were less severely punished by the law.

5.3  Farming specialization The rapid expansion of the market made the development of farming specialization economically viable. Without challenging the supremacy of cereal crops, other forms of agriculture were possible – cultivation of the vine, of course, but also stock breeding, fish farming and market gardening. It is even tempting to make the link between the emergence of a new-style cuisine in seventeenth-century France and greater proficiency in food production as a result of a process of farming specialization spearheaded by both the secular and ecclesiastical elites and by an enterprising peasantry with an eye on the market. In fact, the rejection of acid sauces, the condemnation of the liberal use of spices to disguise the taste of food, and the appearance of recipes adapted to precisely named cuts of meat raise a central and controversial question in food history, that of the quality of the products consumed. It should be strongly emphasized that supporting the thesis of a qualitative improvement of the food consumed by the privileged classes does not amount to saying that people in the Middle Ages sustained 155

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themselves on disgusting food whose taste was fortunately masked by a liberal use of spices. It does, however, put forward the working hypothesis that specialization in farming during early modern times succeeded in ensuring the regular production of foodstuffs deemed to be of quality (Quellier, 2007).

Vineyards French vineyards experienced a remarkable phase of expansion from the tenth century onwards. Rapid population increase in the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries was to the particular advantage of the northern vineyards, those of the Loire basin, and especially those of the Seine basins (the Rivers Marne, Seine, and Oise). Those vineyards supplied the towns of the north of the kingdom, as well as Hainault, Flanders, and England, all of which were big consumers of French wine. From the twelfth century on, English demand stimulated the development of vineyards to the south of the Loire, in areas that formed part of the king of England’s continental possessions. The development started in the regions of Aunis and Poitou, which were linked to the port of La Rochelle, and from the thirteenth century on, spread to the Bordeaux area. After the abandonment of land in the countryside during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the total area given over to the vine expanded once again. During the early modern period, the area under vineyards increased from about 1 000 000 hectares in 1500 to 1 576 000 hectares in 1789. In fact, the spread of vineyards made the royal authorities fear that wine would become more plentiful than cereals and that this would lead to a grain shortage. On average, French vineyards during the eighteenth century produced about 30 million hectolitres of wine a year, the reason for such an increase being the mass consumption of wine in the towns and cities, in addition to exports to northern Europe and the kingdom’s northern provinces. However, with an average yield of 20 hectolitres per hectare, productivity remained poor, except in a few northern vineyards. These low yields were caused by the lack of fertiliser, short pruning, and the bad state of health of the vines. Although overall in France the total area planted with vineyards increased, winegrowing continued to decline sharply in the northern areas of Brittany, Normandy, and Picardy; from the sixteenth century on, it disappeared completely from Flanders and Artois. Nevertheless, even the regions which produced no or very little wine drank large quantities of it. In Brittany, wine and eaux de vie (brandy) arrived by coastal traffic from the regions between Nantes and Bordeaux, which bordered the Atlantic. In Normandy, Rouen’s taverns, like those of Le Havre, not only offered wine that came from Bordeaux and La Rochelle, but also wine from the vineyards of the Paris region, which was transported along the River Seine. In nearly all French vineyards, there was significant deterioration in the quality of wine during the early modern period, due largely to the growth of wine consumption among the urban working classes. Suburban vineyards, which were assured of a large market, opted for quantity to the detriment of quality. The towns absorbed the bulk of production, with an average consumption of at least 100 litres of wine 156



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per town-dweller per year in the early modern period. This deterioration in quality was particularly noticeable in the Paris region, where the largest area of vineyards in France had been established, and in the supply areas of Orleans and Blois right down to lower Burgundy. Nevertheless, the modern period also saw the creation of quality wines such as the sparkling wine of Champagne, more particularly from the second half of the seventeenth century on.

Speculative stock farming The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and beyond, saw the development of speculative stock farming, especially in the distinct specialization of stock-breeding and stock-fattening areas. The increase in the average size of cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry from the late Middle Ages and on into the early modern period bears witness to an increase in selective breeding, an improvement in stock-farming techniques, and an increase in the area of pasture land. The reduction in the number of animal species consumed, which is reflected in recipes of the time and which is confirmed by archaeozoologists, can be interpreted as an indication of the improvement of supply management and of a more proficient production that could respond to taste preferences (Audouin-Rouzeau, 2002). From the study of animal bones from about fifty sites in Picardy and the Île-de-France, Benoît Clavel identified a trend of slaughtering cattle and sheep at an increasingly younger age between the thirteenth and sixteenth century, and the intensification of that trend during the early modern period. This choice as regards production is an indication of the adaptation of farming to the production of quality meat to the exclusion of cull animals. From the traces of cutting on the bones, the same archaeozoological study was able to draw attention to an increase in the practice from the sixteenth century on of slicing meat into smaller cuts, a practice that became ever more complex, thereby indicating that consumers paid particular attention to the kind of cuts of meat they were buying and thus to their quality (Clavel, 2001). The sixteenth century also saw the range of farmyard poultry being extended with the arrival of the turkey from America. This bird became known and renowned throughout France from the 1530s and 1540s, and the evolution of poultry prices testifies to both its place on the tables of the privileged classes and its gradual spread to more bourgeois tables. In 1538, a turkey cost over eight times the price of a hen; by 1711, however, its cost had dropped to just twice that price, with the French middle classes having begun in the seventeenth century to eat it. The turkey had several points in its favour, which all helped to make its acclimatization a success. As a farmyard bird, it fitted perfectly into European domestic poultry-keeping, and the similarity between this American bird and the popular hen, chicken, cock, and capon allowed it to integrate with the most popular types of poultry, and, indeed, to strut with the most prestigious – the peacock and the like. The upper classes’ taste for birds and their particular fondness for poultry meat placed the turkey in a very favourable light, especially as it had arrived in the West at a moment when large centrepieces were still much sought-after for aristocratic banquets. Its size and plumpness enabled it to sit side-by-side, without a 157

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Illustration 5.4  Five Senses. Le Goust (The taste), c. ­1678–1700, ­engraving after ­Robert Bonnart. Published by Henri II Bonnart

trace of a blush, with swans, cranes, storks, herons, and peacocks at opulent banquets; into the bargain, turkey meat was considered be finer-tasting. It is also possible that the expansion of turkey farming contributed to the disappearance from the 1650s and 1660s on of the large, tasteless birds that used to be eaten at aristocratic tables. The turkey in fact offered the dual advantage of tastier meat and a controlled supply resulting from domestic-scale turkey farming (Ethnozootechnie, 1992). 158



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The development of fish farming For towns and cities a long way from the coast, the supply of freshwater fish was less problematic than that of sea fish, as many regions had developed intensive fish-farming, using artificial ponds. As was the case in Sologne, this sort of fish farming for the market was a lucrative and far from negligible activity for those regions unsuitable for cereal growing. Many French regions thus developed a form of ‘alternative agriculture’ based on the activity; they included the Bourbonnais, the Brenne, the Dombes, the Forez, Gascony, the Gâtinais, Limousin, the Nivernais, and Sologne. Ranging from spawning beds to production for the fishwives’ tubs, fish farming in the early modern period concentrated on raising mainly the much sought-after and expensive perch and pike, as well as tench and, in particular, carp. The pond fish par excellence, carp owed its great success to its hardiness and its remarkable ability to adapt. As it was undemanding in terms of food and oxygen, in addition to being a prolific breeder and rapidly ready to eat, carp was easy to raise in stagnant water, and, moreover, could survive several weeks in a small fish-tank, thereby guaranteeing a supply of fresh fish. The original feature of this form of fish supply was the fact that it enabled live fish to be offered to consumers. The fish were transported along navigable rivers in well boats that were equipped with bannetons (‘caufs’ or storage tanks pieced with holes), so as to keep the fish alive in continually renewed fresh water, or, alternatively, by making the fish swim against the current in large nets. On land, carriers could also use waterfilled barrels to transport fish, and often the transport of freshwater fish combined both rivers and roads. Once close to consumers, freshwater fish could be kept alive in fish-tanks, moats, simple fish ponds, or even tubs standing on the ground while awaiting their sale or preparation.

The progress of horticulture The early modern period saw definite technical progress also being posted in fruit and vegetable production in town suburbs and in the gardens of the privileged classes. Improved, regular pruning, the perfecting of the espalier technique in the first half of the seventeenth century and the empirical selection of fruit trees in gardens resulted in the cultivation of bigger, sweeter, juicier and more colourful fruit, unheard of previously (Quellier, 2003). With regard to vegetables, optimal use of aspect, together with applications of manure and the use of glass cloches, enabled early crops to be produced; empirical selection brought to the fore the long, slender, orange, Dutch carrot, for example, which gradually replaced the small, white carrot of medieval times. In response to this improvement in the quality and variety of vegetables and salad vegetables grown in gardens, certain plants that had been regarded as edible in the Middle Ages found themselves downgraded to the status of weeds during the last two centuries of the Ancien Régime. Such plants included rampion, salad burnet, and lovage (Ferrières, 2007). As a rider to this, voices began to be raised during the seventeenth century and later in condemnation of the consumption of out-of-season fruit and vegetables. 159

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It is important to note that the new style of French cuisine was characterized by the increased prominence given to native herbs and spices, by a keen interest in fresh vegetables, and by a taste for soft, fleshy fruit. The coming together of horticultural progress and the development of this new-style cuisine was all the more important, because both phenomena occurred simultaneously. It was indeed from the 1650s that an increasing number of new cookery books and new gardening treatises were published in France, 1651 in particular seeing publication of the Jardinier françois by Nicolas de Bonnefons and the Cuisinier françois by La Varenne, books that provide respective literary testimony to that progress and development.

The establishment of  terroirs in France The beginning of the ‘beautiful eighteenth century’ coincided with the ending of the time of the great famines, the last of which occurred towards the end of the reign of Louis XIV (1693–1694, and 1709). Although the food situation in the eighteenth century improved for the whole population, the seventeenth had nevertheless seen the invention and the rapid development of a new-style cuisine, the result of particularly an improvement in the supply of higher-quality foodstuffs for the elites of birth and wealth (Mennell, 1987). This chapter cannot be concluded, though, without due emphasis being given to the gradual establishment of certain features that are still of central importance in French food culture today. In this country of feudal, Christian, and peasant traditions, the terroir (the sum of the combination of factors characterizing a particular natural environment in which a food or beverage – especially wine – is produced; by extension, a specific geographical place of origin) played a role made all the more important by the fact that markets for a long time existed in isolation. The rapid development of the distribution of foodstuffs, like that of wine, did not harm the terroir – it even served to consolidate it. From at least the final centuries of the Middle Ages, the declaration of a geographical place of origin was used as a proof of quality in order to attract customers. The development of farming specializations inevitably strengthened this link between a certain standard of quality and a certain place of origin, whether it be for Trégor butter, a Maine capon or Montmorency cherries; for Pithiviers lark pâté, Troyes pork brawn or Caux roasting chickens; for Strasbourg foie gras, Cancale oysters, or Brie cheese. The principle of thrift encouraged the consumption of products grown on one’s own property, this last also to be understood as being one’s country house or one’s seigneury. The contemporary model of absolute monarchy also enhanced the kingdom’s products, as being so many confirmations of the realm’s wealth and of its internal riches and resources. The improving discussions on the diversity and bountifulness of the French terroirs, notably present in the mercantilist writings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, reinforced these two politico-economic concepts. The early modern period thus heralded one of the great features of the contemporary French food market: the consumption of terroir products and not just straightforward foodstuffs: of châteaux and not just simple grape varieties. Finally, the long-established custom in towns and cities of presenting local food products as gifts to important and powerful people when they were visiting an area very probably played a far from negligible role in the invention of so-called regional specialities by linking in a very public fashion a certain foodstuff to a particular area. 160



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Bibliography Abad, R. (2002) Le grand marché. L’approvisionnement alimentaire de Paris sous l’Ancien Régime, Paris. Antoine, A. (1998) Les comptes ordinaires de Pierre Duchemin du Tertre, Laval. Audoin-Rouzeau, F. (2002) ‘L’alimentation carnée dans l’Occident antique, médiéval et moderne: identités culturelles, sociales et régionales à travers le temps’, in M. Bruegel and B. Laurioux (eds), Histoire et identités alimentaire en Europe, Paris, pp. 77–100. Belmas, E. (1997) ‘La police du carême en France sous l’Ancien Régime’, in Homo Religiosus, autour de Jean Delumeau, Paris, pp. 234–242. Belmont, A. (2006) La pierre à pain. Les carrières de meules de moulins en France, du Moyen Âge à la révolution industrielle, Grenoble. Cabourdin, G. (1975) Terre et hommes en Lorraine du milieu du XVIe siècle à la guerre de Trente ans. Toulois et comté de Vaudémont, Lille. Cabourdin, G. (1984) La vie quotidienne en Lorraine aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, Paris. Clavel, B. (2001) ‘L’animal dans l’alimentation médiévale et moderne en France du Nord (XIIe – XVIIe siècles)’, Revue archéologique de Picardie, n° 19. Cocula, A.-M. (1985) ‘La galette et le pot de beurre: l’approvisionnement menu des villes (XVIe - XVIIIe siècles)’, L’approvisionnement des villes de l’Europe occidentale au Moyen Âge et aux Temps modernes, Flaran 5, pp. 231–236. Ethnozootechnie (1992) Le Dindon – Aspects archéologiques, historiques, ethnologiques, Ethnozootechnie, n° 49. Croix, A. (1981) La Bretagne aux 16e et 17e siècles. La vie - la mort - la foi, Paris. Duby, G. and Wallon, A. (eds) (1975) Histoire de la France rurale, vol. 1 and 2, Paris. Farge, A. (1974) Le vol d’aliments à Paris au XVIIIe siècle, Paris. Ferrières, M. (2002) Histoire des peurs alimentaires. Du Moyen Âge à l’aube du XXe siècle, Paris. Ferrières, M. (2007) Nourritures canailles, Paris. Hocquet, J.-C. (1984) Le sel et le pouvoir, de l’an mil à la Révolution française, Paris. Hocquet, J.-C. (2005) ‘Les ressources de la mer  : le sel et le poisson’, in A. Cabantous, A. Lespagnol and F. Péron (eds), Les Français, la terre et la mer, XIIIe – XXe siècle, Paris, pp. 106–176. Kleindienst, T. (1963) ‘La topographie et l’exploitation des ‘Marais de Paris’ du XIIe au XVIIe siècle’, Paris et Ile-de-France, Mémoire, 14, pp. 7–167. Lachiver, M. (1982) Vin, vigne et vignerons en région parisienne du XVIIe au XIXe siècle, Pontoise. Lachiver, M. (1988) Vins, vignes et vignerons. Histoire du vignoble français, Paris. Lachiver, M. (1991) Les années de misère. La famine au temps du Grand Roi, Paris. Laurioux, B. (2002) Manger au Moyen Âge, Paris. Lespagnol, A. (1997) Messieurs de Saint-Malo. Une élite négociante au temps de Louis XIV, Rennes. Leturcq, S. (2004) La vie rurale en France au Moyen Âge, Paris.

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Lister, M. (1873) Voyage de Lister à Paris en MDCXCVIII, Paris. Mennell, S. (1987) Français et Anglais à table du Moyen Âge à nos jours, Paris. Meyer, J. (1989) Histoire du sucre, Paris. Montenach, A. (2001) ‘Esquisse d’une économie de l’illicite. Le marché parallèle de la viande à Lyon pendant le Carême (1658–1714)’, Crime, histoire & sociétés / Crime, history & societies, 5 (1), pp. 7–25. Moriceau, J.-M. (1994) Les fermiers de l’Île-de-France, 15e-18e siècle, Paris. Moriceau, J.-M. (2005) Histoire et géographie de l’élevage français. Du Moyen Âge à la Révolution, Paris. Nassiet, M. (1998) ‘La diffusion du blé noir en France à l’époque moderne’, Histoire et Sociétés Rurales, 9, pp. 57–76. Perrot, J.-C. (1975) Genèse d’une ville moderne. Caen au XVIIIe siècle, Paris - Den Haag. Quellier, F. (2003) Des fruits et des hommes. L’arboriculture fruitière en Île-de-France (vers 1600-vers 1800), Rennes. Quellier, F. (2007) La table des Français. Une histoire culturelle (15e-début 19e siècle), Rennes. Quellier, F. (2008) ‘Le repas de funérailles de Bonhomme Jacques. Faut-il reconsidérer le dossier de l’alimentation paysanne des Temps modernes?’, Food & History, 6 (1), pp. 9–30. Salvadori, P. (1996) La chasse sous l’Ancien Régime, Paris. Terrier, D. (1998) Histoire économique de la France d’Ancien Régime, Paris. Thirsk, J. (1997) Alternative agriculture: a history from the black death to the present day, Oxford. Zemon Davis, N. (2003) Essai sur le don dans la France du XVIe siècle, Paris.

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Illustration 6.1  La plantation mécanique des pommes de terre ­sélectionnées (mechanical planting of selected potatoes), cover page of ­Rustica: Journal universel de la campagne, 12 March 1951

6 Northern France, 1750–2000 Marc de Ferrière le Vayer and Jean-Pierre Williot Agriculture in north-western France these past two centuries or more has experienced great upheavals. These have been marked by specialist mechanization, the search for more intensive production less focused on basic polyculture, and the spread of agricultural knowledge and experience, particularly in varietal selection. Although not continuous, the changes have gathered pace since the 1960s. However, they have not prevented the preservation of a rural and agricultural heritage that is still very much alive in the countryside and in the gastronomic valorization and development of its terroirs.

6.1 1750–1880 Changes in agricultural production in northern France In the second half of the eighteenth century, the French agricultural situation was somewhat complex. As Arthur Young, the English writer on agriculture and economics, noticed during his journey through France in 1789, agricultural practices did not appear developed as far as modernization was concerned. Crop rotation was predominantly biennial, with the practice of leaving land fallow still widespread. The English traveller was not the only person to observe this fact, as the French physiocrats, too, described very much the same situation. However, they added to it a political dimension, which ascribed this supposed French backwardness partly to government action and the disastrous role of the taxation system under the Ancien Régime. It seems important to qualify this view of a backward agriculture, especially with respect to Great Britain. In actual fact, although France was slow in emulating the British enclosure movement and the establishment of a modern type of farmland criss-crossed with hedges and trees, her agriculture and farmers nevertheless managed – except in periods of bad harvests – to feed the French population, which, at 25.7 million in 1750 and 38 million in 1880, was the largest in Europe, in spite of its low density. They also managed to finance France’s development, although the country remained under-industrialized. The countryside of the large north-eastern quarter of France played a key role in this regard, as it was able to reap the benefits of a favourable conjunction of good climate conditions, rich and fertile soils (as was the case from time immemorial with the pastureland of Normandy), investment in property by large landowners who were at times very well-informed about agricultural developments, and a ground rent that was a consequence of agricultural innovation. In other respects, the situation of agriculture was uneven, to say the least. The landtenure structure remained widely archaic, and was dominated by large landowners, such as the aristocracy, the king, and the Roman Catholic Church, all of which were 165

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often rather distant both geographically and socially from the peasant farmer, but which required him to pay heavy taxes, a burden that could reduce his activity to one of subsistence agriculture. However, there also existed a movement that had originated during the Renaissance and that concerned agriculturalists interested in the modernization of agriculture, as well as research into farming techniques and those plants that could be cultivated in order to contribute to the advancement of farming practice. A very clear illustration of this is to be found in the pages of Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, whose seventeen volumes of text and eleven volumes of illustrative plates published between 1751 and 1782 give an insight into numerous types of farming. The French monarchy itself also became aware of the need to modernize agriculture and endeavoured to promote progress on that front through the actions of its ministers. All this resulted in a significant improvement in production during the eighteenth century, periods of crisis apart, and – when the food supply was rather better ensured – in the rapid increase of the kingdom’s population, which in 1789 reached 28 million, of whom 22 million lived in rural areas. On the other hand, French agriculture remained a largescale consumer of labour, as about two-thirds of the population worked in agriculture in 1789, an indication of relatively low productivity. In fact, this situation was unsatisfactory for at least two reasons. The first was that sufficient manpower could not be released at a rapid enough rate for work in industry; the rate was in any case much less rapid than in England and in the region that is now Belgium, the slowness of this transfer of labour from agriculture to industry contributing to the overall backwardness that France began to experience in comparison with her age-old competitors. The second reason is that late-eighteenth-century agriculture generally remained in equilibrium – but only just. It met the country’s needs only in good years, and all that was needed was a climatic catastrophe, such as an extremely wet summer, a very cold winter, or gales and storms, for cereal crises, wheat riots, and accusations of speculative hoarding of flour to return. These crises, which are described as being ‘of the Ancien Régime’ by economic historians, remained frequent and could often take a political turn, which may not have worried the monarchy, but were nonetheless difficult to control. A certain amount of economic archaism was also responsible for these problems. Jacques Turgot, France’s Controller-General of Finances at the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI (1774–1776), and then Jacques Necker, Director-General of Finances (1776–1781), attempted to abolish internal taxes and to make the domestic grain trade more transparent and efficient. The French population, too, felt the repercussions of these crises, as at times they led to major mortality peaks, about which members of the French elite were constantly concerned. The best example is that of Antoine Parmentier (1737–1813), an army pharmacist, who in one way or another devoted his life to championing ways of fighting these crises, including his struggle to make French small farmers adopt the cultivation of the potato. Having discovered the benefits of this plant in about 1760 while on a military campaign in Prussia during the Seven Years War, he became convinced that it could solve the cereal crisis problem (Muratori-Philip, 2006: 105 ff.). If the French Revolution was partly caused by the cereal crisis, it was itself a major contributor to deep-seated changes that affected the situation in the French countryside. 167

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As a revolution brought about by the middle-classes, it assured the continuance of private property law, but, by the seizure of the property of the Church and the monarchy, and part of that of the nobility, it in fact organized a sweeping transfer of ownership that laid the foundations of the structure of French agricultural proprietorship for the next two centuries: on the one hand, the small property and the small farm, and, on the other, the continued existence of ground rent and therefore of large numbers of landless rural people who scratched out a subsistence living on the common lands. The great landowners, former aristocrats, and the new captains of industry took on the role of pioneers in the modernization of French agriculture, examples of which include the growing of sugar beet in the Nord region, wine growing in Champagne, and beef-cattle fattening on pasture land in the Nivernais. This uneven state of affairs did not make for a great improvement in French agriculture and failed to bring an end to cereal crises, which continued to break out on quite a widespread scale until the Second Empire in the early 1850s. It was still very much an agriculture based on the production of foodstuffs for human consumption; no longer simple subsistence farming, but not far from it. The 1852 agricultural survey reported that about 60 per cent of the working population was cultivating 50 per cent of the country. Two-thirds of the arable land was given over to the cultivation of cereals and other starchy food crops, whereas a quarter of it lay fallow; seeded pasture accounted for only 7 per cent of total agricultural land in use (Tulard, 1995). From the 1770s onwards, in order to tackle this situation, the French privileged classes, led by the physiocrats, advocated a thorough modernization of agriculture through changes in the tax system and more especially through the adoption of new crop-growing practices. One of the campaigns was for the abandonment of two-yearly or three-yearly crop rotation (which involved leaving land fallow) for a more efficient crop-rotation system that included seeded pasture. With his fight to obtain wider recognition for the potato, Antoine Parmentier played a significant role in this movement for agricultural improvement. In fact, not only did the potato fit perfectly into crop rotation, besides improving soil quality to such an extent that cereal yields increased as a result, but it was also one of the crops that made it possible to solve the problems of famine and undernourishment. The start of its cultivation in Brittany during the first half of the nineteenth century also showed that even if, as in England, it was considered as a fodder crop, it provided the means for a remarkably rapid expansion of livestock and especially pig farming. However, Parmentier’s fight was not easily won, and, in fact, it was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that the potato really became a staple food for the French, and even then not in every region. Whether they were the result of armed conflicts or of periods of bad weather, cereal crises continued for a long time to afflict the French population. The first of any importance in the nineteenth century occurred in 1816 and 1817, following the occupation of France by the allied armies after the fall of the Napoleonic Empire in 1814: cerealgrowing areas had contracted and there was a doubling of the price of wheat, which had the catastrophic effect of a sharp increase, too, in the prices of such substitute products as potatoes and buckwheat. Three significant bad-weather-related crises occurred in the first half of the nineteenth century: in 1829–30, 1839–40, and 1846–47; such crises always 168



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provoked riots in both urban and rural areas, with protests against the price of flour and bread, attacks on millers and bakers, and a refusal to allow the flour trade to carry on as normal. Very often the riot leaders were women, since food problems of this kind were of direct concern to them. Even a department such as Indre-et-Loire, which covers the region of the former province of Touraine and was an area both peaceful and generally well-provided with food, experienced an increase in rioting and attacks on houses, mills, carts and markets, not only in villages of all sizes but also in Tours, the department’s main city. City and country dwellers alike in areas where there were actually no local food-supply problems also resorted to violence in their efforts to prevent cereals being sent to regions where there were threats of food shortages (Jessenne, 2006). Plant disease also came into the equation, so much so that the healthy growth of certain crops could never be guaranteed. The first important epizootic disease that struck was potato blight. During the 1840s, this affected potato crops in certain regions of France and especially those in Flanders; although it did not have the same disastrous consequences as it had in Ireland, it nevertheless contributed to the marked slowing-down of the adoption and spread of potato growing. Plant diseases therefore exacerbated the problems that arose during the period of cereal crises, which lasted until the mid-nineteenth century.

Regional identities and urban markets In 1809, Cadet de Gassicourt produced a rough map of local products; this detailed the well-attested presence of what were not yet called produits du terroir (specifically local products), rather describing farming activities that were sometimes very specialized; already well-known was the development of market gardening on the banks of the Loire, as well as the shipping of vegetables from Breton ports to the British coast. After him, also in the early nineteenth century, it fell to certain famous gourmets, such as BrillatSavarin (1755–1826) and Grimod de la Reynière (1758–1838), to vaunt in their books the quality of particular food products, with Brillat-Savarin putting forward the idea that gastronomy acted as a stimulus to farmers and winegrowers. Another author, Eugène Briffault, who in 1846 described Paris à table, stressed the Parisian market’s attraction for the poultry producers of Maine, the market gardeners of Touraine and the livestock farmers of Normandy. In his Grand dictionnaire de cuisine, published posthumously in 1873, the writer, Alexandre Dumas, in turn enumerated the high-quality products used in the culinary art (Ory, 1998: 106). All these observers therefore recognized the purpose of agricultural work, albeit that there was still no real discussion about local specialities. The perception of the premium market and the ability to supply it with reputable products was not unfamiliar to contemporaries. When the reputation of an arable-farming or livestock-rearing area gave rise to the opportunity to develop important market outlets, a product’s origin became very much a criterion of selection. Rough forms of recognition and official approval were already being issued by agricultural societies set up within a very short time span in several provincial towns, some of them even before that in Paris in 1761: for example, Rennes in 1757 and Tours in 1759; those in Alençon, La Rochelle and Caen followed in 1762. Agricultural show committees, established in the 1830s and 1840s under the July 169

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Illustration 6.2  La Place des Halles (the Halles market in Paris), 1759, engraving

Monarchy, also carried out this function, but these were not instigated systematically as a way of enhancing the reputation of food products, as is seen today, but rather as a way of supporting means of improving agricultural productivity. The medals awarded were nonetheless marks of distinction. Many of the members of these agricultural shows also owned large estates, a land-owning middle class concerned with its investments and particularly well-represented in those regions where land was productive and profitable, such as the Nord, Normandy, the Loire Valley and the Paris Basin. The institution of national agricultural shows, such as the 1844 fatstock show in Poissy near Paris, as well as France’s participation in world exhibitions (with that of 1855 in Paris giving rise, for example, to the classification of the Médoc crus – vineyards of recognized superior quality – and that of 1867 providing the venue for a great demonstration of French agricultural and food-related exuberance), created an early movement of quality recognition. Quality recognition was sometimes prompted by determining choices. Thus, the Poissy fatstock show was an influential event used to its best advantage by those championing the crossing of French cattle breeds with the English Durham-shorthorn breed. Beef-cattle farmers looking to expand this practice were aiming to increase the profitability of the more rapid fattening of beef cattle, 170



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thereby making it easier to supply the expanding urban markets. This aim was supported by the French government, which founded the Haras du Pin in the Orne department of Normandy in order to breed the English shorthorn. However, all this had only limited results, with the exception being the creation of the Maine-Anjou breed of cattle. On the other hand, the increasing number of these regional agricultural shows, together with the establishment of the annual national agricultural competition – the concours général agricole – in 1870, led to the structured organization of the promotion of local agriculture, thanks to the opening of specialist sections of agricultural competition, such as that for honey in 1875 and that for cider and pears in 1887 (Mayaud, 1991). This distribution of production throughout all the French regions tended to increase the rural character of the outskirts of towns and cities, and brought the countryside into contact with urban demand. Some writers (Weber, 1983) have nevertheless taken the view that the modernization of rural France in the late nineteenth century would have taken shape within a fragmented agricultural territory holding an infinite variety of pays (local areas), each cocooned within its own folklore. This is a biased view and does not take account of small farmers’ participation in the early stages of a spatially large-scale agro-food market. From time to time, the urban markets made it possible for small farmers to turn their surplus production of, for example, butter, eggs, poultry, fruit, and vegetables into cash. Cheese was still made on the farms, but this did not prevent it from already being sold further and further afield, as is shown by the example of Norman farms, which, well before the Second Empire, were specializing in the production of highly-regarded cheeses. In the Pas-de-Calais in the mid-nineteenth century, about thirty urban markets were able to extend their catchment area to cover the entire department, and small farmers within a forty-kilometre radius of Arras travelled there to sell their produce, leaving at night on foot or by cart in order to be at the market in the morning (Hubscher, 1980: 419). Local fairs played a more important role. At Charente in 1835, at least 120 of them were held; in 1893, 1 600. Late-nineteenth-century postcards bear witness to the large number of these fairs; even the smaller villages had a fairground. In the nineteenth century, a total of 28 000 fairs would have been held in 8 000 towns and villages every year. Markets and fairs nevertheless had distinctive roles. Markets played a part in the shifting of normal production, and were the regular location for everyday purchases; they belonged to the small farmer’s immediate world. Fairs were organized according to another calendar and took place in another dimension; they had different supply channels and offered a much wider variety of goods for sale. Many more people went to fairs, and more important business was carried out at them, particularly the sale of livestock, witness the presence of numerous middlemen. However, the traditional means of transporting agricultural products still restricted the distribution of goods and hence food supply, although admittedly the slowness of transport had long ceased to be an obstacle to fresh Normandy butter being shipped across the English Channel to London. From the 1860s, the export of Normandy butter from Honfleur and Le Havre – and even that from Bordeaux to Brazil – took a new turn in favour of regular, though modest, trade. Nevertheless, it was more often than not the state of the roads that caused problems. Market-gardening in the suburbs and 171

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the cultivation of well-exposed slopes close to waterways (offering a means of transport for barrels) were thus developed. Carts, which travelled at an average speed of 3 kph, were useful for transporting large quantities, but the smaller handcarts were easier to handle when making one’s way around ruts and potholes. Carts remained the main link between the urban market and its surrounding farms until the arrival of the railway. Even nearer to a town, fresh produce was still carried in a basket on a man’s back or in panniers on an animal’s back; indeed, produce transported in this way was exempt from Paris’ entry tax. Although food shortages did still occur in the nineteenth century, the market nonetheless prompted the emergence of local specialities, the transport of which increased after the road-network improvements of the July Monarchy (17 000 kilometres of departmental roads were constructed between 1830 and 1848, with towns and villages being responsible for by-road maintenance after the passing of the Thiers Law of 1836), and then with the expansion of the railways. Waterways benefited greatly from substantial investment during the 1820s and 1830s, which took in the construction of 3 000 kilometres of canals, improvements in the navigability of rivers, and the building in 1838 of the Canal du Centre and in 1851 of the Marne-Rhine Canal. These waterways played an important part in the transporting of heavy agricultural products; in the 1840s, indeed, water transport was three and a half times cheaper than transport by ordinary road haulage (Caron, 1997: 47). From 1857, however, the tonnage transported on the waterways decreased in relation to that transported by rail: by 1865, for example, 80 per cent of the milk consumed in Paris was arriving by rail. Ultimately, it was the construction of the secondary rail networks within the framework of the Freycinet Plan of 1878 (which also included important road investments) and then the increase in product-handling points that brought radical change to the conditions of food supply. The improvement in transport had numerous effects: besides enabling the small farmer to travel further (the average journey length in France quintupled over the course of a century), it opened up distant markets for crops. In addition to the increase in mobility and the flow of goods, the communication of news that it facilitated, particularly with the development of the stamped postal service after 1849, helped small farmers to become integrated into their social and economic environment.

Initial developments in the agro-food industry The concentration of vegetable growing in the valleys – in Picardy, the Loire Valley, the Nantes region, and the Paris Basin, for example – the growing of sugar beet north of Paris (59 per cent of total French production and 75 per cent of the sugar-beet factories were in the four departments of the Nord, Somme, Aisne, and Oise in 1840), and hop growing, which was widespread in the countryside, resulted in the rapid expansion of food-processing industries from the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1824, Joseph Colin founded one of the first canning factories in Loire-Atlantique; this inaugurated the range of such important brands as Cassegrain, which was set up in 1856 to can sardines, tuna, and ready-made meals, and which, in the late nineteenth century, was canning peas and asparagus for urban consumers. In Artois, the sugar producer, Louis Crespel-Delisse, owned nine farms around his eight sugar-beet factories during the 172



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period of the Second Empire; boosted by demand, sugar production increased eightfold in the second half of the nineteenth century. The number of breweries increased in the Nord and formed a thriving market for hop growers. For its part, the cheesemaking industry in the Pays d’Auge was a very profitable market for Normandy’s dairy farmers and supplied the Paris market. To give a typical example: in 1868, a Monsieur Decombrecque owned a 450-hectare farm in the Pas-de-Calais, where he fattened 700 head of cattle, grew sugar beet, cereals and fodder crops, and owned a brewery, a distillery, a sugar beet factory, a brickyard and a flour mill, among other facilities, all of this testifying to the farm’s integration into the industrial sector. Thus, the demands placed by the food-processing industries on agriculture became more marked and were associated with the rise in the standard of living of the middle classes and intermediate social categories from the 1840s on. By consuming more beef and poultry, and more and more sugar and dairy products, these social categories (whose food budget was decreasing in relative value whilst increasing in absolute value) supported rapid agricultural growth and the expansion of livestock farming. The renown of certain products rested on this growth in demand, and thereby determined a region’s agricultural economy, as was the case, for example, with the Champagne region’s champagne ‘houses’, for which several hundred winegrowers worked. Moët et Chandon dispatched about 500 000 bottles of champagne in 1840, but increased this amount eightfold in the first decade of the twentieth century (Desbois-Thibault, 2003). This progressive force led to the construction of new infrastructures in the city centres. Les Halles in Paris were opened in 1857, and were the model for urban covered markets for at least a century. Everywhere, the growth of the food trade led to the expansion of rural production areas. From the 1860s, several hundred market gardeners’ carts arrived every night in Paris from the surrounding countryside, specialized production resulting in significant benefits in all sectors of crop cultivation (strawberries, French beans, tomatoes and watercress, for example) in the areas around the capital. Mention must also be made here of the fortunes built on cereal growing on the great plains of Beauce, Hurepoix, and Brie, which had been providing corn for the flour mills since the eighteenth century. The covered markets kept trade alive in town and city centres, but abattoirs were pushed to the outskirts of urban areas; a development seen in all of France’s towns and cities from the first half of the nineteenth century on. Paris’ abattoirs opened in 1867 with the merging of the old abattoirs and the livestock market. During the same period, small towns, too, built abattoirs, thereby ensuring a market for local livestock farmers. All in all, whether supplying the covered markets or selling animals to the abattoirs was concerned, urban sources of supply added impetus to the development of local specializations from the 1870s on and stimulated agricultural markets in the late nineteenth century (Chemla, 1994). The people of France took advantage of the improvements in agricultural production, and during the period of the Second Empire consequently enjoyed an overall increase in the food available. Unequal in both quantity and quantity, the food that was on sale at local fairs as well as at local markets increased in amount and variety. A new link was established between crop growing, livestock farming, and food-product processing. Milk production increased from 43 million hectolitres in the 1820s to 73 million in 173

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1886, and from c. 1850 to 1870 Paris’ consumption of butter rose by 40 per cent. Several industries developed as a direct result of these innovations, with margarine factories (after the invention of margarine by Hyppolyte Mège-Mouriès in 1869), oil factories, cheese dairies, and chocolate factories all seeing the light of day. In the department of Seine-et-Marne, the chocolate-making company Menier produced 3 900 tonnes of chocolate in 1869, and soon became the largest chocolate manufacturer in the world. The average calorie intake in France increased from 2 000 calories per person per day in 1830 to 2 800 calories per person per day in 1880. The working-class diet in particular improved, even if large regional differences still existed, as the 1879 surveys of Frédéric Le Play clearly show. Also benefitting the food trade, finally, was the free-trade system put in place between France and Great Britain with the signing of the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty in 1860: French wines could be exported to Great Britain at a reduced rate of duty, and British food products could be imported into France free of supplementary duty.

6.2 1880–1950 Prices of and markets for agricultural goods In the mid-nineteenth century, the situation of French agriculture still seemed relatively ambiguous, and this was certainly one of the reasons why the rural world in France was affected by a large-scale crisis from the middle of the Second Empire (especially from the mid-1860s) on. This crisis got considerably worse in the early years of the Third Republic during the 1870s, with its main cause being the collapse of rural industries. Particularly badly hit were textile-related activities, such as the traditional production of woollen cloth, lace and soft furnishings, which had enabled a very sizeable workforce to remain in the countryside. Traditional small-scale textile production could no longer keep pace with demand, and the combined effects of the fashion phenomenon and the new distribution network compounded the problem. It was from then on the large factories of northern and eastern France that produced the new fabrics, and at a lower price. This was also the case with small metal industries and of an entire swathe of local production that faced stiff competition with the development of the railways. The rural population was all the more affected by the crisis as, at the same time, agricultural prices fell sharply as a result of overproduction (of wine, for example), the pressure exerted by imports of certain goods (wheat, meat and wine, among others) and the slump in sales, due to the sluggishness of consumer purchasing power. This was particularly the case with cereals, whose prices fell in 1873 and continued to fall, albeit more slowly, until the end of the nineteenth century. The quintal (100 kg) of wheat thus dropped in price from 31 francs in 1879 to 19 francs in 1887. Rural impoverishment was therefore a very important problem and in fact heralded the closing of the domestic market. The transport revolution also added to the agricultural crisis, particularly that in cereal farming, by enabling cereals to be imported at a cheaper price from the United States. Moreover, the growing of oil-producing crops was also weakened by competition from southern Mediterranean and Asian production. There 174



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was a disastrous situation thus of agriculture in southern France sinking into a very long period of crisis and, in the north of the country, experiencing difficult economic times. The situation deteriorated still further, as a result of catastrophes related to plant diseases, such as phylloxera from 1862, and to insect pests, such as the Colorado potato beetle after the First World War. These two well-known crises were not limited geographically to France, but affected her all the more severely, because the agricultural situation there was already very difficult. The Colorado beetle invasion, which occurred after the potato had become a staple food of the French, was sufficiently serious for the departmental prefects to reorganize school holiday arrangements so as to enable children from country schools to go into the fields to collect the insects and so save the potato crops. Phylloxera was a real human and economic catastrophe, and was all the more important, since it started to spread just when French vineyards were attaining their greatest extent and when certain regions were succeeding in specializing in wine production. That maximum extent was reached in 1874, with 2.4 million hectares producing 83 million hectolitres of wine; it was spread over seventy-two departments and took in the Loire Valley, Champagne, and Alsace, among other regions. The first outbreak of phylloxera in France was in 1863; the disease spread slowly northwards and reached Champagne in 1894. French wine production collapsed to 25 million hectolitres in 1879, thereafter averaging less than 40 million hectolitres per year until the end of the century (Garrier, 1995). The reconstruction of France’s vineyards meant planting new vines; for this purpose, European vines were grafted onto resistant American vine-stocks, but this often led to a standardization of vine varieties and especially to a reduction of the area under cultivation. It was not until the 1930s that the total vine-growing area was re-established at its level at the end of the Second Empire. In addition, it seems that the use in France of American vine stocks had made the spread of grape downy mildew possible. To ensure supplies for the domestic market, France turned partly to importing wine, especially from Spain, as well as to the development of a new national wine-growing area in Algeria, which was then a French colony and considered to be an integral part of France. The rebuilding of national output by means of significant colonial production, coupled with the supplies of wine from neighbouring countries then resulted in a very serious oversupply crisis from 1900, which once again threatened the stability of the wine-growing regions. These imbalances had repercussions on French agriculture’s international trade. One solution to the crisis seemed to be protectionism, symbolized by the tariff introduced in 1892 by the Minister of Agriculture, Jules Méline, which marked a strong return to protectionism, as it involved a general 30 per cent increase in duties. This came after the protectionist tariff increases of 1884 on livestock and of 1885 on wheat, albeit that there was no significant effect, as France’s foreign agricultural trade showed no signs of improvement (Cornu and Mayaud, 2007). At the same time, farmers could generally no longer count on a really dynamic domestic market, since French population growth remained stagnant throughout this long period; the population increased slowly from 38 million in 1890 to 39 million in 1920 and to 42 million in the late 1930s, and purchasing power remained very unequal. 175

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Illustration 6.3  The potato market at Saint-Malo, c. 1900, postcard

However, some crops continued to be exported, especially the top-of-the-range potato varieties and, more generally, early vegetables, due, for example, to the rapid increase of the sale in Great Britain of onions and other produce grown in the Côte du Léon area of north-western Brittany. Small farmers from around Roscoff who left France to sell their crops of pink onions directly to their customers in Great Britain, even getting as far north as Scotland, were given the nickname of ‘Onion Johnnies’ by the British. It seems that in their ‘golden age’ during the 1920s, over 1 300 such people exported 9 000 tonnes of onions, showing that these very local initiatives were no less than an expression of the small farmers’ desire for change and progress (Chapalain, 2000). This desire for change and progress was also apparent in a different area of activity. In the late nineteenth century, the emergence of regional gastronomy, due largely to the development of tourism (as was the call for the preservation of folk traditions), gave further impetus to the farming world. A connection was gradually established between a good product and a particular area of crop production or livestock farming. 1905 legislation, which aimed to remedy the abuses of food fraud, represented definitive recognition of terroir (geographically defined) products. In order to contend with the great crisis, small farmers also sought to organize themselves and to gain a certain degree of political and economic autonomy. On the back of legislation passed in the late 1870s during the Third Republic, the first farmers’ unions were founded in the early 1880s; they were behind the creation of the Crédit Agricole bank in 1884 and subsequently of many co-operatives. It is traditionally considered that the actual co-operative movement originated in the vinicultural areas of 176



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the south of France in an attempt both at better organization in the face of the crisis of overproduction and at developing sales. At Charente, small farmers also grouped together to make the reconversion from wine growing to milk production easier. However, central and north-western France certainly did not stay on the sidelines and saw the creation of, for example, the Franciade (Coopérative des Agriculteurs du Loir-et-Cher – Loir-et-Cher Farmers’ Co-operative) at Blois, which made the bulk purchase of fertilizers possible, and the CAB (Coopérative des Agriculteurs de Bretagne – Brittany Farmers’ Co-operative), another purchasing co-operative, at Landerneau. The movement developed rapidly and expanded geographically in the inter-war period, helped by the 1935 legislation on the office des blés (corn bureau), which authorized the creation of storage co-operatives. In the dairy sector, the creation in 1932 of the Isigny co-operative in Normandy illustrated another facet of the co-operative movement, one whereby farmers themselves took responsibility for the processing and marketing of dairy products. The CANA (Coopérative Agricole La Noëlle-Ancenis) is yet another example of this (Nicolas, 1988).

Technical developments in agro-food production From the 1880s on, the countryside took advantage of the all-important expansion of its market outlets resulting from transport-infrastructure development. In 1889, 72 per cent of milk transported by rail to Paris came from the west (Guillaume, 2003: 56); in that same year, 5 000 tonnes of cauliflowers were dispatched from Saint-Omer, triple that amount in 1904. In 1938, Les Halles, the central wholesale market in Paris, received a total of 88 per cent of its butter, 86 per cent of its fresh fish and seafood, 69 per cent of its eggs, and 68 per cent of its fruit and vegetables by rail. Pricing policies were devised to capture traffic, even if some links remained very expensive, and producers and merchants had to develop special wagons, especially refrigerated wagons, and stackable packaging. The quest for speed and a suitable price became of vital importance in the transporting of food goods as soon as the early fruit and vegetable market found a clientele. This policy favoured particularly the transport of dairy products from Normandy, vegetables from Brittany and fish from the Channel coasts. In the 1930s, fresh fish from Boulogne-sur-Mer arrived in Strasbourg within 18 hours. In 1932, 18 per cent of cereals and 15 per cent of foodstuffs were transported by the rail network in western France, and 24 per cent of cereals and 41 per cent of foodstuffs by that in northern France. The rail operators also became agricultural advisers through their organization of themed conferences on, for example, potatoes, table grapes, plums, and prunes, and of agricultural services loaded with various special offers, and through their recommending the development of varietal selection. All in all, the density of railway stations throughout France created abundant facilities for the dispatch of foodstuffs, and this soon gave rise to seasonal adjustments in consumption habits. Starting in the 1880s, it was not long before the pernicious effect of the lengthening distance of the sources of supply on large-scale food fraud was known and exposed. Complaints were regularly levelled at the practices of changing labels on Normandy butter, the over-salting of Breton butter to conceal its rancid taste, the illegal blending 177

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of wine, the adulteration of milk with water that was not always safe, and the contamination of meat by bad preservation methods. Food safety is certainly not a new concern (Ferrières, 2002: 370 ff.), but it brought about firmer legislative intervention in the late nineteenth century. Drawing its inspiration from an 1890 Belgian law, the French Parliament in 1895 put forward a first draft bill whose aim was to limit fraudulent practices in the sale of goods. Taken up by the Prime Minister and former Minister of Agriculture, Jules Méline, in 1898, the issue found its response in the law of 1 August 1905 aimed at protecting consumers from fraud and especially at regulating competitive practices (Stanziani, 2005: 287–315). This law remained in force until 1993, and was to a great extent the source of product-origin specifications, therefore forming the basis of the determination of the present-day appellation system. After the adoption of the law on the prevention of both fraud in the sale of goods and the adulteration of food and agricultural produce came the creation of a fraud inspection service, set up by decree of 24 April 1907. The delimitation of the great wine-growing regions from 1908 on and the introduction of appellations d’origine (laws of 1919 and 1927, and the legislative decree of 30 July 1935) led to the setting-up of the appellations d’origine contrôlées quality control system. For a long time, this was reserved for wines, and so such selection did not greatly concern the agriculture of north-western France. Other repercussions on rural economic life came from the development of foodprocessing industries. New product-packaging requirements aimed at facilitating transport and hence the supply of products to the consumer led to the rapid development of small-scale businesses, such as box, crate, and wrapping-paper producers, basket ateliers and nail factories, and of a labour force for the gathering of straw to fill the large wicker baskets and crates. The adoption, for example, of the stapled poplar-wood box for the packaging of cheeses from Normandy gave rise to a thriving rural industry in Livarot in the 1890s. This chain, which linked the producers in the country and the market middlemen, created in this field – as in that of capital goods – a diverse, rural industrialization process of which the market towns and villages took full advantage. The packaging of fruit and vegetables to be transported by rail required both more careful preparation of the cargo and the design of stackable crates; the transport of milk, furthermore, posed new collection and handling problems. Precise dates cannot be given to these changes, albeit that there were numerous examples in every rural commune, but development was continuous, a result of the rapid expansion of the markets from the 1860s on. Innovation was at times another stimulus for local agricultural development, as in the case of the illustrious Amand Darégal, who, in 1899 in Milly-la-Forêt (Essonne), created a business for the growing of aromatic culinary herbs, and who went on to become the world’s leading herb producer. Changes were championed above all by the final actors in the food chain, such as the Association Centrale des Laiteries Coopératives des Charentes et du Poitou (Central Association of Charentes and Poitou Dairy Co-operatives), which used ice-cooled wagons from 1899 on, and the Compagnie des Chemins de Fer de l’État (State Railway Company), which extended its refrigerated transport network to the Vendée, 178



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Charentes, Brittany, and Normandy from 1906 on. Right from the early twentieth century, the care taken in the packaging and labelling of agricultural products became a way of conquering markets. Moreover, the advent of food advertising introduced the new brands to the towns and cities, and, with the help of large posters or chromolithographs for children, established new links between a region’s businesses and its popularity with consumers (Martin, 1992). The Bretel butter factory in Valognes (Normandy) thus became a household name, as did the Bonduelle family business, which had started grain distilling in 1853 and then began canning vegetables near SaintOmer in 1926. Rural society was not completely removed from this communication, despite unrealistic portrayals of it that often bore little resemblance to reality. When, as a consequence of tourism and fairs, regional gastronomy made its appearance during the years between 1910 and 1920, many producers had access to new means of achieving recognition. This upheaval in the countryside was not connected solely with market penetration, since, from the late nineteenth century on, machinery had been transforming the look of the countryside and farm work. Crop-growing techniques incorporated more systematic changes than have often been described, from frameworks of ploughs in iron or steel, which were frequent after 1875, to fertilizer spreaders, whose increase in use followed the 1886 legislation against fertilizer fraud. The latest development in the late nineteenth century stemmed from the increase in the number of machines in those areas of production in which they had previously been very little used: for example, the Alfa-Laval cream separator in butter factories, and the hop-stripping machine. Between 1882 and 1892, the number of mechanical seed-drills in the Pasde-Calais increased by 79 per cent, that of mechanical reapers doubled, and that of steam-powered threshing machines tripled (Hubscher, 1983: 16). The farms of the regions of Artois, Brie, Beauce, and Soissonnais were among the leading mechanized farms of the late nineteenth century, because of their sufficiently large size, openfield practice and the capitalist resources concentrated in those with high financial returns. Great things were also expected of the use of electricity on the farm: indeed, the first trials of electrical ploughing began in the department of the Marne in 1879. However, widespread use depended on the expansion of electricity networks, which was quite slow in the countryside. Rural electrification was the subject of a national conference in 1924, but over half of France’s towns and villages had to wait until 1929 to be connected. By 1937, 90 per cent of French towns and villages were connected to mains electricity, and the same proportion of the population had access to electricity. However, gaps in supply remained: some farms were not connected, and, more often than not, electricity was used in particular to light the cowshed. Although the use of electric threshing machines increased in the large cereal-growing areas, mechanized power was for a long time of only secondary use. This was certainly not through want of trying to interest small farmers, witness the demonstrations of new farm machinery that were organized, such as those in Normandy in 1936, where the winnowing machine, the apple crusher, the motorized cider press, and the ploughing winch – a whole collection of machines capable of improving agricultural yields – were to be seen (Levy-Leboyer and Morsel, 1994: 1198 ff.). 179

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Another means of modernization in the countryside lay in the dissemination of information at the regular gatherings that brought together farmers, members of the rural elite and merchants. Fairs, in particular, were the ideal setting for the spreading of news, and such gatherings were so frequent that, from 1881, a law imposed the obligatory health surveillance of livestock fairs and markets by a veterinary surgeon. In 1911, Bayeux in Normandy held a livestock market and a food market on Saturdays, and a butter market and a livestock market on Tuesdays. Every week there were sixtyfive butchers’ stalls, along with the stalls of thirty-five farmers selling their vegetables, fifteen rabbit and pigeon sellers, sixty butter sellers, about a hundred stalls selling eggs, and a total of several dozen specialist traders who supplied the small farmers with baskets, wheelbarrows, clothing, pottery, and metal goods. Bayeux also held twelve annual fairs in addition to these markets. Holding a market or a fair was also a way for the town or village, to which buyers and sellers came from far and wide, to boost the circulation of cash and to support local businesses, whose vitality depended on these periodic gatherings. In 1912, the third international agricultural machinery exhibition took place in Bourges. In 1922, the Grande Semaine de Tours (Great Week of Tours), one of the regional fairs that multiplied during the inter-war period, was accompanied by an agricultural machinery exhibition, which was considered to be the most important of its period. The spread of knowledge also took place through the gradual development of specialist education. The increasing number of training establishments in the late nineteenth century – such as the dairy industry school in Mamirolle (1888) and the national agricultural industry school in Douai (founded in 1893 on the initiative of the sugar-producing and refining industries) – also formed a favourable setting for the spreading of information on new mechanical techniques (Charmasson et al., 1992). The institution of specialist services as part of the agriculture-related civil service also contributed to this, particularly from 1903, with the setting-up of the Service des Améliorations Agricoles (Agricultural Improvements Service), which in 1918 became the Service du Génie Rural (Agricultural Engineering Service).

The effects of the wars: between agricultural destruction and reconstruction Other actors contributed in rather unexpected ways to the development of mechanization. Agricultural reconstruction in the Pas-de-Calais after the First World War gave the department’s agricultural public services the opportunity to encourage farmers to find ways of getting round the lack of carthorses. In the administrative district of Vimy, in Artois, threshing machines increased in number from forty-one in 1922 to 221 five years later. In many cases, moreover, mechanization provided the means for leeway to be made up in productivity, so severely restricted by two successive wars (the FrancoPrussian War and the First World War). The First World War created two types of disruption in the countryside. On the one hand, the male workforce had gone to fight at the front and was obviously not available to work the fields, so that many women were forced either to leave the farm or to continue farming in very difficult circumstances; 180



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added to these problems was the fact that, when the once fit and healthy farmers came back from the front often as disabled ex-servicemen, the whole organization of the farm had to be rethought. On the other hand, there was requisitioning of agricultural products, which was organized and controlled by a national agency attached to the Ministry of Agriculture. The First World War therefore brought with it a great many imbalances that affected the market; at the same time, the public authorities maintained the ban on the export of agricultural produce until 1927. The ravages of war affected the farmlands of the Nord, and the loss, whether killed or wounded at the front, of great numbers of small farmers decimated the population of many villages in Brittany, the Orleans region, and Sarthe. During the Second World War, the image was established of a countryside cut off from the hardships suffered in the urban areas, but also the setting for substantial black market activities. However, the shortage of basic materials, such as twine and fertilizer, the lack (once again) of manpower, and the food levies (concerning especially potatoes, fats, oils, and meat) imposed by the occupying forces resulted in considerable agricultural destabilization. In fact, however, situations could be ambiguous. In Mayenne, the production of market-gardening crops halved between 1937 and 1942, whereas the areas of pastureland increased, but this did not prevent the department from producing surpluses and supplying food to the Paris region (Veillon and Flonneau, 1996: 79 ff.). The fact remained that farming conditions were particularly difficult after three decades of declining financial resources. The financial value of the sale of agricultural machinery, for example, fell from 900 million francs in 1929 to 200 million francs in 1938, and whereas there were 3.2 million carthorses fit for work in 1913, there were only 850 000 in 1945. All in all, this period was marked by major developments, which were sometimes not very obvious, but whose effects could be observed in France’s economic performance. Between 1880 and 1950, the French population increased from 38 million to 42 million. Over the same period, the rural population decreased, losing at least a quarter of its workforce, and the active farming population, which numbered 7.9 million in 1881, was just 5 million in 1954. Into these figures must be read both the rise in the urban population and in the accompanying demand for food, on the one hand, and the fall in the number of agricultural workers, on the other, which of necessity generated enhanced productivity. This last grew at an average rate of 2–3 per cent during the interwar years and the 1940s. Of course, this development did not occur only in northern France; also to be taken into account is the fact that the changes affected, sometimes dramatically, the retreat from rural areas in other regions, such as Aquitaine, Perigord, Auvergne, and Limousin. On the other hand, there was a marked trend for the large farm to come (albeit slowly) to the fore, especially in northern France, although this trend was still insignificant in the France of the 1950s. Only 3.5 per cent of farms were over 50 hectares, and 869 000 out of 2.3 million farmers farmed areas of land of under 5 hectares (Gavignaux, 1990); even so, France did partially meet her food requirements. Although the French balance of trade had been almost permanently in deficit since about 1910, it must be remembered that in 1938 France exported 720 million francs’ worth of wine, 121 million francs’ worth of cheese, and 60 million francs’ worth of preserved food (Pilliet, 1946). In some sectors, such as fresh vegetables, fruit, and wine, 181

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national production was more than enough; in terms of volume, however, imports were five times greater than exports. In the post-war France of 1949, agriculture accounted for 12.8 per cent of GDP and 29 per cent of the working population.

6.3 1950–2000 The path of co-operation and specialization With their greater openness to the world, a better understanding of society and better vocational training, young farmers shook up the farming world after the end of the Second World War. They wanted to set themselves up in farming without reproducing their parents’ situation, and so worked to modernize agriculture. Generally speaking, the co-operative movement enjoyed a boom, borne along by the prospect of creating national unions to co-ordinate the operation of co-operatives on a national scale. Co-operatives took part in the modernization of agriculture through their involvement in all sectors of farming: upstream, by enabling – through the Coopératives d’Utilisation de Matériel Agricole (CUMA – Co-operatives for the Use of Agricultural Machinery) – agricultural machinery to be purchased and rural areas consequently to be equipped with it and by constructing the first industrial units for the production of livestock feed (UCAAB – Union des Coopératives Agricoles d’Alimentation du Bétail, from 1955); downstream, with the setting-up of food-processing plants and the sale of produce. Modernization legislation, the Debré-Pisani laws, which came into force in 1962, gave even more encouragement to this movement to set up big co-operative organizations, which were associated with the onset of French agriculture’s period of remarkable productivity. The history of the dairy co-operative, Elle & Vire, created in 1945 to produce butter, is a good example of this. In 1960, President Charles de Gaulle opened the new powdered-milk factory of this symbol of the success of the co-operative movement, before the co-operative took over one of its main private competitors, Negobeureuf. Elle & Vire grouped together more than 40 000 producers in the early 1980s, and at that time was one of the leading dairy businesses in France. However, its survival after experiencing considerable financial problems and subsequently going into liquidation was due only to its take-over by one of the two biggest private dairy groups, Bongrain, in 1990. This setback is symbolic of the limitations of the co-operative movement in France (and elsewhere), which, in the process of expanding and becoming more international in scope, has been led – but without having the necessary financial resources – to adopt strategies very similar to those of private international business groups (Guillaume, 2003; Bonin, 2005; Elle & Vire). The creation of specialist markets and clock auction markets (also known as Dutch auctions or open-outcry descending-price auctions) in the 1950s and 1960s changed the situation. After the Second World War, another effect of the co-operative movement made itself felt in Brittany and the north of France in particular. The entry into farming of young farmers who had often been members of youth groups such as the Scouts de France, and the Jeunesse Agricole Chrétienne (JAC – Christian Young Farmers), 182



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Illustration 6.4  Clock auction, 1960’s, Saint Pol de Léon

and who had then participated in the trades union activities of the Centre National des Jeunes Agriculteurs (CNJA – National Young Farmers Centre) caused an upheaval within the still-traditional world of the small farmer. By using new forms of union protest, such as the famous invasion of the sub-prefecture in Morlaix in 1961, they achieved more visible State intervention, but they also took the situation in hand by deciding to organize the markets by at times, if need be, the use of strong-arm tactics (Purseigle, 2004; Coulomb et al., 1990). Until then, agricultural-product-marketing systems had often remained relatively undeveloped. Apart from those large sugar and cereal-producing organizations that had connections to the industry, the sale of agricultural products was conducted either directly at the markets or through the intermediary of merchants and shippers. As a result of this, farmers found themselves in a weak position, especially with regard to the price-setting process. Prompted by the opportunities developed by the youth movements, and especially their organized study trips abroad, in particular to the Netherlands, the young managers attempted to reorganize the system so as to enable the producers to control the markets. Their first achievement was linked to the vegetable market crisis in Haut-Léon and Trégor in the late 1950s, and culminated in the setting-up of a société d’intérêt collectif agricole (SICA – agricultural co-operative) and a producers association. After very strong pressure, including the use of physical force, was put on uncooperative producers, membership of these organizations became obligatory, and thereby made the creation of a clock auction market at Saint-Pol-deLéon possible 1961. The success was such that the region’s producers of early vegetables, 183

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who had begun with artichokes and cauliflowers, gradually extended their spheres of activity. This resulted first in the setting-up of a shipping company, Brittany Ferries, in order to make exporting – especially to Great Britain – easier and more rapid. The SICA of Saint-Pol-de-Léon also developed its own vegetable brand, Prince de Bretagne. This is by no means an isolated example, as markets of this type have been set up in Burgundy and Normandy for livestock farming and in the Nord and Picardy for vegetable growing (Giraudon, 1983; SICA de Saint-Pol-de-Léon). It was really only in the 1950s that rural France, and particularly the north-western regions, managed to extricate itself from half a century of difficulties. Part of the expansion was due to the industrialization of agricultural production, processing now taking place in agro-food businesses. This was the case as regards the long-established co-operatives, as in Charentes (Échiré butter, 1894), in Poitou (goat cheese dairies on an industrial scale from the 1930s), and in the west. In 1966, the co-operatives made up 43 per cent of the dairy sector, their role by and large falling within a context of the further development of agro-food industries, which were still poorly integrated in the early 1960s. The link with rural establishments seemed obvious, for example, in the canning factories scattered along the north-west coast, or in the practice of pluriactivity, as in southern Brittany where fish- and vegetable-canning factories formed partnerships. The French canning industry’s turnover exceeded a billion francs in 1960 and testifies both to food diversification and the democratization of the use of processed products (ready meals and then frozen foods), as well as to the spread of industrial outlets accessible to the rural market (INRA, 1992). This consumption-led movement supported the transition to high productivity. In spite of the developments of the previous decades, and except for the cereal- and sugar-beet-growing areas of the Paris Basin and the Nord, polyculture and the different types of livestock farming were still widespread just about everywhere in France in the early 1960s – in the west, no less than anywhere else. Yet low yields, a limited degree of mechanization and the inadequate use of chemical fertilisers were not the general case. Just after the Second World War, the Premier Plan de Modernisation et d’Équipement (First Equipment Modernization Plan – 1946–52) included agricultural machinery among the six basic sectors regarded as priority sectors, along with energy, steel, cement, coal, and transport (Mioche, 1987). The plan was communicated to the farming community by the Coopératives d’Utilisation du Matériel Agricole (CUMA – Co-operatives for the for the Use of Agricultural Machinery), whose role became more important after 1955, or by the agricultural technical centres, which began to be founded in 1944 and numbered 1 300 in 1961. From its inception in 1946, the annual agricultural machinery show became the modernization showcase, with inventiveness being seen in all the various sectors; the self-propelled apple picker of 1959 being just one example. The idea of such a show was by no means new. However, the most obvious sign of the changes brought about after 1950, and which enabled production to be increased through changes in the work patterns of farmers and the improvement of productivity, was the increase in the number of tractors, thanks to their miniaturization and dieselization. Between 1938 and 1955, their number increased tenfold. There were 760 000 in France by 1960 (75 per cent of which were diesel); of these, 4.7 per cent 184



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were in Normandy and 6.5 per cent in Brittany. All observers noted that progress was linked particularly to the use of mechanical equipment. By 1970, 62 per cent of farms throughout France boasted a tractor. There were advances, too, in the genetic selection of animals and plants, and the use of fertilizers increased (to 5 million tonnes in 1972, primarily in the arable areas of north-western France where applications of 400 kg per hectare were reached.) Agricultural training was also the subject of voluntary reforms that improved the teacher-student ratio (1961 decree on the organization of agricultural vocational training). This was such a success that in 1973 a total of 139 000 students were on training courses (Noël and Willaert, 2007: 168). By 1966, agricultural research, centred at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA – National Agricultural Research Institute, founded in 1946), was being conducted at sixteen research centres and by 400 research specialists; the part it played in the agricultural and food dynamic is patently obvious. The development of hybrid maize began in 1958 to the north of the Loire; the creation of a research sector specializing in the agro-food industries followed in 1970; and in 1976 the cultivation of the Belle de Fontenay potato was saved, thanks to the variety’s in vitro preservation. Intensive regionalization of production manifested itself everywhere. In the mid1970s, yields of soft wheat in the departments of Somme, Oise, Aisne, Marne, Seineet-Marne and Eure-et-Loir exceeded 7 million quintals per hectare. Such intensive production favoured the emergence of a ‘Breton model’, marked by very strong integration with the market economy, a high sales rate outside the region and abroad, the importing of raw materials used in the production of livestock feed, specialization in pig farming and the growing of fresh vegetables, and the rapid development of agrofood and food-processing industries. This change took place within a global context of modernization. Throughout France, between 1950 and 1980, net agricultural production per small farmer, expressed in calories, increased sevenfold, whereas it had barely doubled during the entire nineteenth century. This radical development explains why, in the late 1980s, the regions of north-western France were among the best-placed in agricultural-revenue ranking by region. Of a total of twenty-two regions, Brittany, the Pays de Loire, and Centre took the first three places, with Champagne-Ardennes in sixth place, and Picardy and Poitou-Charentes in eighth and ninth respectively (Gavignaux, 1990: 90).

The world of the small farmer between the state, the market and Europe These changes would not be easy to understand if they had not been linked to the more general context of French governmental policy and, at the same time, to the establishment of European agricultural integration through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), all of which during the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was, in fact, during these years that, within the nascent European Community, French policy structured its position on the defence of its farmers through negotiations leading to the establishment of Common Market organizations, to the adoption of Community regulations and to the setting-up of the European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund 185

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(EAGGF) This should have resulted in a stimulation of production as a consequence of the setting of European prices, which were appreciably higher than those previously current in France. However, the first steps along the new path provided by Europe relied on earlier key initiatives. French legislation in 1945 and 1946 on the status of tenant farming and sharecropping tenants built on a 1942 text that was already favourable to the farmer, and is evidence of a change in the French government’s state of mind. The aim of this legislation was, by giving farmers a high degree of protection, to support the stability of the person rather than that of the farm. Without being an attack on property rights, these laws contributed to the establishment of a new attitude that seemed to make the nonfarming landowner appear an incongruous figure. Moreover, by ensuring that young farmers would set up on their own farms in consequence of the guarantee that they would benefit from the effects (including financial) of this legislation, the 1945 and 1946 laws promoted the modernization movement, which was by then getting under way. This sense of purpose was based on two findings. Firstly, the existence observed everywhere of relatively strong demographic pressure: even though France’s low birth rate meant that there were not large numbers of young people, there were, from 1945 on, more of them looking to set up on their own farms than older farmers retiring; older farmers were reluctant to retire because of the absence of a proper agricultural retirement scheme, which would have made it possible for them to give up farming. To the lack of available farms was added the unsuitability of the existing farming structures to a movement of radical change. One of the solutions put forward from 1947 was land consolidation, which, from 1960, was associated with the reforms of the Prime Minister, Michel Debré, and of the Minister of Agriculture, Edgard Pisani, concerning the organization of farm restructuring on a voluntary basis. The respective measures were meant to be complementary. The prime aim of land consolidation was the reparcelling of land in order to facilitate the rationalization of farming methods. Actual farm restructuring was carried out through the creation of the Sociétés d’Aménagement Foncier et d’Établissement Rural (SAFER – Rural Land Development Board), which purchased the land of farmers who were retiring, and attempted to develop new farms whose yields would ensure a decent income for the young farmers who were going to buy them. This was also one of the reasons for the setting-up of a financial scheme to encourage the more elderly farmers to get out of farming. These steps undoubtedly came too late. The French population structure and the changes in the economy within the framework of what is generally called Les Trente Glorieuses (the 30 glorious years from 1945 to 1975 or, more precisely, to the 1973 oil crisis) contributed to a collapse in the number of farmers, thereby removing the demographic pressure behind the reforms. The proportion of the French working population in the primary sector declined from over 12 per cent to under 6 per cent between the ending of the war and the late twentieth century. This resulted in a significant increase in average farm size – although, of course, there were disparities – from less than 14 hectares in the early 1950s to more than 30 hectares at the end of the century, with an average size that was larger than that in the rest of Europe, especially in the northern half of France. 186



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The creation of the CAP, notably at France’s instigation, is indissociable from the great Debré-Pisani reform legislation. France had gradually established an ambitious agricultural policy between 1945 and 1958, with the first measures dating from the Premier Plan de Modernisation et d’Équipement (1946–1952), and with the placing of agricultural machinery among the priority sectors. The policy was then extended to the whole range of farming activities, such as the provision of subsidies for livestock farmers, irrigation, and the packaging and storage of crop production. A second, more ambitious, section of the plan was an extension of measures taken in 1936, which included the creation of the Office National du Blé (National Wheat Bureau), and was concerned with market organization and support, with the French government setting up organizations to carry out the procedures. These organizations were the Fonds d’Orientationet de Régularisation des Marchés Agricoles (FORMA), the Office National Interprofessionnel des Céréales (ONIC, which succeeded the Office National du Blé), and the Fonds d’Intervention et de Régularisation du Marché des Sucres (FIRS). However, these measures, albeit necessary for the modernization of French agriculture, did not go far enough, because structural and social issues also needed to be tackled. The Debré-Pisani legislation of 1961 and 1962 remedied this situation as, in addition to the SAFERs, it set up the Fonds d’Action Sociale pour l’Aménagement des Structures Agricoles (FASASA). The plan also required a fourth section; stemming from the same legislation, this was concerned with social policy and featured a system of start-up grants for young farmers, retirement grants for more elderly farmers, and the establishment of a social-security-benefits scheme for farmers, all of which received extensive state funding. The operation of the whole of this policy was transferred to the European level from the 1960s and the establishment of the CAP. During the 1950s, within the context of the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), French politicians in favour of European construction argued for agricultural integration, possibly extending geographically beyond the six member countries of the ECSC. They saw in this a means for French agriculture to dispose more easily of its surpluses of wheat, butter, wine, and sugar. With the support of the Netherlands, discussions were entered into within what was then called the ‘Green Pool’. For the French, the most important role was played by Pierre Pflimlin, a former Minister of Agriculture, who was then Minister of Foreign Affairs, but it was the Dutch who came up with the best chances of progress, thanks to the action of the Dutch Minister of Agriculture, Sicco Mansholt. The failure of a wider Green Pool, which was linked to a lack of willingness on the part of the other partners, to France’s internal problems – these had already caused the failure of the European Defence Community (EDC) – and to the fierce opposition of Great Britain, prevented any immediate implementation of the project. The work involved had not, however, been wasted because, in addition to the fact that it had, as it were, paved the way to future discussions on the Common Market, the cases examined played their part in getting French farmers used to the idea of strong European integration. In fact, it was French determination that brought about the European budget financing the modernization of French agriculture to such a generous extent. One of 187

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the immediate effects of the CAP, which last was initially signed up to by six member states, was the increase in agricultural production linked to protected markets, as well as the great difficulty in maintaining a policy of unified prices within a monetary system where the French franc was depreciating against the German mark. After the devaluation of the franc in 1969, it became necessary to devise complex procedures in order to maintain the illusion of a single price. Monetary compensatory amounts (MCAs) provided for this, and agricultural prices were fixed in units of account because of the lack of a single currency. With the devaluation of the franc, German farmers found themselves to be the injured party, and French products gained a strong competitive edge over those of both West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany - FRG) and the Netherlands. Monetary compensatory amounts were an accounting mechanism that re-established economic equilibrium by means of taxes or subsidies. French products were taxed on export, and so concerned negative MCAs, whereas German products received export subsidies, and so concerned positive MCAs. The changes that affected the agricultural sector had very clear effects on the French agricultural trade balance; all the more so because, as a result of pressure from French governments and farmers, the CAP was more of a price support policy than a reorientation policy. Whereas, in the mid-1950s, France’s trade balance with regard to most agricultural products had been just about balanced or negative, from the second half of the 1960s – as a result of guaranteed prices as well as the opening-up of European borders – it became favourable, with sometimes very high cover rates, e.g. 145 per cent for cereals and milk, and about 110 per cent for cheese and butter (Noël et al., 2007). Agricultural modernization operations profoundly changed French agricultural production, which within a few years became very productivist. In order to achieve this, French agriculture changed its methods and products, placing equal reliance on generous CAP subsidies, on the development of an often farmer-controlled agrofood industry and on the opening-up of the European market. However, the CAP’s relative success, combined with the effects of the 1970s crisis, caused problems in the French agricultural situation after a few years. Structural deficits, as in the case of pork, continued; it became increasingly difficult to find markets for surplus production; and prices did not keep up with those of industrial products. All this led to the risk of a new crisis in French agriculture, whose early 1960s productivist model seemed increasingly unsuitable, especially with the European Community’s change of policy. Beginning in the 1980s, at a time when the French government elected in 1981 was attempting to change the balance of power vis-à-vis the trade unions, Europe set about introducing measures whose effects were to cut guaranteed prices, to limit surpluses and to separate the various subsidies from production. It was the end of the kind of ‘welfare state’ that had been protecting the world of France’s small farmers since the early 1960s; the 1992 MacSharry reforms confirmed this state of affairs by drastically changing the rules. At the same time, the countryside, enjoying repopulation, ceased to be able completely to absorb and integrate the rural population into agricultural activity. This was a farming crisis that could no longer rely on the State and that had to accept the European Commission’s measures, such as the set-aside land scheme, which really offended and upset farmers. The modernization of French agriculture during the 188



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1960s had resulted in a fall in the area of fallow land from 1.4 million hectares in 1950 to 230 000 hectares in 1990, but the area rose again to 1.2 million hectares in 2000, after the introduction of the set-aside scheme (Noël, 2004). The most remarkable effects bore upon the structures of French agriculture. The agricultural working population continued to fall rapidly, declining by 2003 to 1.3 million persons working on 590 000 farms and representing 4.8 per cent of the total labour force. A quarter of these were under 40 years old, and this was an expression of the decreasing age of those who were actively involved in farming. However, 20 per cent of these younger farmers were pluriactive, as they were not able to live from their farming income alone. Nevertheless, the size of farms had greatly increased, 12 per cent of them now being larger than 100 hectares and accounting for 42 per cent of the French utilized agricultural area (UAA). For their part, very small farms of under 5 hectares now accounted for no more than 1.5 per cent of the UAA and were mostly very modern hydroponic or market-gardening operations. The European reforms also had the effect of intensifying French agriculture’s difficulties as a commercial force. France’s market share, which had already been under threat since the early 1990s, fell steeply before regaining the place at world level that it had occupied in 1970. This was linked to competition from developing countries and contributed all the more to the decline in the importance of agriculture in the French economy. This does not mean that French agriculture responded poorly to demand, but rather that its competitiveness was called into question, especially with the heavy restrictions on export aid. A new development was that the falling market share affected extra-Community just as much as intra-Community exports. On the other hand, more secondary processing products, such as the ranges offered by the agro-food industries, were being exported. Such a development marked a turning point, since, because of the minor relative increase in prices, agriculture accounted for no more than 2 per cent of French GDP. However, if until then its role in the equilibria of the balance of trade had compensated for its low importance, this became increasingly less the case.

The return of brands to the terroir As a consequence of the development of agro-food-industry production before the mid-twentieth century, food brands competed with each other in a way that has been boosted by the role of supermarkets since the 1980s. In the free play of competition, commercial arguments are based on a great many factors, such as taste, healthiness and authenticity, thatare likely to win over the consumer. The use of qualitative references, such as product recognition, has now replaced that of the terroirs at the centre of the market. This fact is not something new, as it can trace its origins back to the latenineteenth-century agricultural boom and to market development, which increased the number of both producers and middlemen. The development of road transport and the rapid expansion of the refrigeratedtransport chain, together with the extension of the motorway network, have made vitally important contributions to these changes. It was only in 1970 that the regions of the Nord and Burgundy were linked by motorway. Since then, the domination of 189

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road connections has never ceased, and the lorry can be seen throughout the countryside, from tankers collecting milk to lorries pickingup livestock. By the beginning of the 1980s, rail transport accounted for only 25 per cent of internal goods transportation, as compared with road transport’s 60 per cent share. Twenty years later, the rail network was transporting only 11 per cent of goods, as compared with the 80 per cent share of the road network, of which a key proportion concerned the transport of agricultural and food products (SNCF, Rapports de gestion – management reports). One consequence of this is the connection between supermarket expansion and the development of fashions in food that mark consumer behaviour. There is nothing that is of specific relevance to northern France here, but the increase in the consumption of dairy products, the widening choice of cheeses on the cheeseboard and the growing appeal of ready-cooked meals are the fruits of this transformation of the whole countryside. In this trend towards food globalization, the reference to a product’s precise and mediatized location has therefore become a new distinguishing marker. The extension of the appellation d’origine legislation to cheeses (law of 1955), and then to other agricultural and food products (law of 1990) has been instrumental in boosting the trend for the enhancement and development of traditional local products through the official recognition of centuries-old products, as is the case of the cheese appellations in Normandy, Berry, Sologne and Touraine. For example, goat keeping in the Sancerre region, which expanded in the nineteenth century after the phylloxera disaster, had its reputation established by the award in 1976 of an appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) to the Crottin de Chavignol cheese. The side effect of the awarding of AOCs has been to promote brand sales strategies. As a consequence of the rapid development and diversification of urban patterns of consumption, producers were at first simply suppliers to food-processing plants. Since the late nineteenth century, brand names have been seeking to develop consumer loyalty, and since the rise of mass consumption and the development of distribution networks from the 1960s onwards, local producers have, in turn, been able to take part in this movement and sell their own brand, or else to contribute to the renown and reputation of collective brand names, such as those of co-operatives. The total effect of the AOC is considerable. In 2003, France had 467 wine AOCs, 41 cheese AOCs, 4 butter AOCs, and 23 AOCs for other food products of agricultural origin. Taken together, the vineyards of Champagne and the Loire Valley produced 20 per cent of AOC wines; moreover, almost half the AOC cheeses come from north-western France (Delfosse, 2007). Certain products are now so well-known that their producers have a guaranteed market, thanks to the quality of the culinary and gastronomic reputation with which they are associated. An example of this is Brittany’s Coco de Paimpol bean, which has had its AOC since 1998, and whose advertising points out on the packaging that the beans are ‘traditionally picked by hand’. To the distinction of the AOCs has been added since the 1960s the search for other forms of agricultural product enhancement. The institution of the Label Rouge (Red Label) in 1965, following the initiative of the poultry farmers of the Landes, enabled producers of poultry, pork, and veal, in particular, to generate higher visibility for their brand on the market. The marketing goal is, above all, to make clear the difference 190



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Illustration 6.5  Package of demi-Camembert L’Hôtesse, late 1950s-1960s, printed by ­Garnaud at Angoulême for the Laiterie ­Coopérative de Reignac en ­Touraine (Indre-et-Loire)

between them and the battery and factory farming practices that Brittany’s economic development has tended to favour. However, there is no unity behind this quality certification, as production standards remain diverse within any defined framework; on the other hand, it does impose additional costs on all those producers who want to use such certification. Other labels or quality certifications are increasingly persuasive in their attempts to win over the consumer. In 1987, the Île de France adopted the produits du terroir (traditional local food products) quality endorsement, and western France’s farmers and agro-food industries were quick to follow its example: Brittany in 1995 (Produit en Bretagne – Produced in Brittany) and Normandy in 2003 (Bienvenue en Gourmandie – Welcome to Gourmandy). Of the over 6 000 food products that have distinctive, regional quality labels, Brittany and Normandy had 41 per cent in 2006, a fact that demonstrates the vitality of their agricultural chains. Within this context, the annual, national concours général agricole has contributed to heightened interest. In 2006, 16 976 participants were registered (13 993 in the ‘wine’ category, 2 208 in the ‘various food products’ category and 975 in the ‘dairy products’ category). Of the products entered, 9 974 were selected and assessed by more than 3 000 judges, and 3 807 or 23.5 per cent of them were awarded medals (INSEE, 2007). The development of rural tourism in the form of gîtes (self-catering furnished holiday houses), bed-and-breakfast establishments and farm holidays gradually became linked to the promotion of local products. Whereas, in the 1960s, rural tourism had been primarily regarded as a kind of ‘social service’ tourism for low-income families from urban areas, it enjoyed a change of image during the next two decades. Starting first in the Basses-Alpes (1951) and the Haute-Loire (1954), the ‘rural gîte’ policy gradually 191

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spread throughout the whole of France. It complemented the effects of the creation of parcs naturels régionaux (national parks), including that of Armorique in Brittany in 1969, and became a means of revitalizing rural areas in decline. Rural regeneration by means of green tourism concerns particularly the bocage areas of Normandy, the whole of Brittany and the Pays de Retz (south of Nantes). Consequently, farms that procured residence to tourists and sold their own produce, and sometimes that of other producers as well, saw this a new means of accessing the market: with farm-reared poultry, preserves, fruit and vegetables, jams, honey. As a consequence of media communication of saveurs à l’ancienne (traditional flavours), this trend enjoyed a commercial vogue among curious tourists and city dwellers longing for rural life, folk tales, and symbols (Poulain, 1997). From this point of view, Brittany and Normandy have been among the most innovating regions in exploiting this traditional image. The idea of a ‘fabricated’ portrayal of Normandy by means of a folksifying of the local countryside and customs has even been perceived as the foundation of a specific type of tourism since the late nineteenth century. This overvaluation of farming produce also falls within a policy of Europe-wide recognition of products that have attained distinction because of their quality. The introduction of European quality labels in 1992 – the Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) label which recognizes a terroir in the same way as did the French AOC, then the Protected Geographical Indication (PGI), which is awarded to a food product, based on the criterion of a link with a specific area and a particular reputation – brought about a change of scale in market recognition. Since the Community regulation of 2006, the PDO indicates the name of a region, of a specific place or, indeed, even of a country, which is used to designate an agricultural product or a foodstuff that comes from there. The quality aimed for is determined by the nature of the geographical environment and the human factors of production, processing or development of the product. Tradition is protected by the Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG) label. This strengthening of the qualitative designation of certain products, which is not specific to the northern and western regions of France, but which affects the whole country, and which now extends throughout the European Union, has found another raison d’être, since media coverage of food-safety scares has aroused consumers’ suspicion about the actual safety of food. Food-safety-related health concerns and worries became much more important in the last quarter of the twentieth century, albeit that these fears are in fact nothing new, as the condemnation of food adulteration in the nineteenth century reminds us. The French government responded with restricted import and protectionist policies to the alarm generated by outbreaks of bovine tuberculosis or pig trichinosis (Ferrières, 2002). However, the development of the means of communication has created a greatly increased capacity for the dissemination of information – and of misinformation. Food safety alerts, as evidenced by the frequency of confirmed cases of salmonella, listeria, and food contamination, have grown in number since the 1970s, but some have more specifically involved the farming world in general, and – considering the geographical specialization of livestock farming – northern and western France in particular. The scandal of the use of growth hormones in vealcalf feed products, which was revealed in 1979, led to the condemnation of intensive 192



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farming methods, which had become more widespread since the early 1970s. In 1998, milk from several herds in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais proved to be contaminated by dioxin in smoke from incineration plants. The first case of ‘mad cow disease’ detected in France appeared in the Côtes d’Armor on 2 March 1991, and the systematic screening of cattle began in June 2000. The labelling of beef with the name(s) of the country/countries where the animal was born, fattened, and slaughtered aims to reassure consumers through the principle of traceability. Coupled with the establishment of the Agence Française de Sécurité Sanitaire des Aliments (AFSSA – French Food Safety Agency) in 1999, this policy of reaction to food-related health problems produced a sea change in behaviour, as the precise determination of the origin of a product and its progress through the food chain became a standard requirement. Agriculture in northern and western France found itself at the forefront of these issues, which even included the calling into question of the position of farmers in society, a concern that had already begun with the identity crisis that the pig farmers of Brittany had been going through since the 1980s. A pro-active approach, the stricter regulation of crops and increased scientific monitoring have all become obligatory in the farming world. As areas of both livestock and arable farming, the regions of northern and western France are directly concerned with current developments. To give just one example of this, the selection or not of a genetically modified plant, such as herbicide-tolerant sugar beet, which was the subject of a study discussed at the AFSSA in 2004, involves the Nord region of France, where sugar-beet growing is partly concentrated, and also Normandy, Brittany, the Nord, and Picardy, if the mangel-worzel, which is grown as a fodder crop, is taken into consideration. However, the development of agricultural production and that of the rural world is not solely determined by science and legislation. Today, the market response comes by way of the promotion of a local agriculture that is more respectful of the environment and that is sold to consumers by the promotion of the concepts of nature, organic farming, and the taste of traditional local food.

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Bibliography Allaire, G. and Boyer, R. (1995) La grande transformation de l’agriculture: lectures ­conventionnalistes et régulationnistes, Paris. Bérard, L. and Marchenay, P. (2004) Les produits de terroir entre cultures et règlements, Paris. Bonin, H. (2005) Les coopératives laitières du grand sud-ouest (1893–2005). Le mouvement coopérateur et l’économie laitière, Paris. Caron, F. (1997 and 2005) Histoire des chemins de fer en France, 2 vols, Paris. Chapalain, M.-H. (2000) Johnniged Roskohatro-wardro, Gwerzerien ognon damruz. Roske Breiz-Veurabaoe 1828, Roscoff. Charmasson, T., Lelorrain, A.-M. and Ripa, Y (1992) L’enseignement agricole et vétérinaire de la Révolution à la Libération. Chemla, G. (1994) Les ventres de Paris, les halles, la Villette, Rungis, Paris. Cornu, P. and Mayaud, J.-L. (eds) (2007) Au nom de la terre. Agrarisme et agrariens en France et en Europe du 19e siècle à nos jours, Paris. Coulomb, P., Delorme, H., Hervieu, B., Jolivet, M. and Lacombre, P. (eds) (1990) Les ­agriculteurs et la politique, Paris. Delfosse, C. (2007) La France fromagère (1850–1990), Paris. Desbois-Thibault, C. (2003) L’extraordinaire aventure du champagne Moët & Chandon, une affaire de famille (1792–1914), Paris. Duby, G. and Wallon, A. (eds) (1976) Histoire de la France rurale, vols 3 and 4, Paris. Elle & Vire, internal historical note. Ferrières, M. (2002) Histoire des peurs alimentaires, du Moyen Age à l’aube du XXe siècle, Paris. Garrier, G. (1995) Histoire sociale et culturelle du vin, Paris. Gavignaud, G. (1990) Les campagnes en France au XXe siècle, Paris. Guillaume, P. (2003) Histoire sociale du lait, Paris. Guintard, C. and Mazzoli-Guintard, C. (eds) (2004) Élevages d’hier, élevages d’aujourd’hui, Mélanges d’ethnozootechnie offerts à Bernard Denis, Rennes. Giraudon, D. e.a. (1983) Mondes paysans, Alexis Gourvennec, 25 ans d’action, Tu Ha Bro. Hubscher, R. (1980) L’agriculture et la société rurale dans le Pas-de-Calais, du milieu du XIXe siècle à 1914, vol. 2, Arras. Hubscher, R. (1983) ‘L’identité de l’homme et de la terre’, in Lequin, Y, (ed.) Histoire des Français XIXe–XXe siècles, vol. 2, Paris. Hubscher, R. (1999) Les maîtres des bêtes. Les vétérinaires dans la société française (XVIIIe–XXe siècle), Paris. INRA (1992) Innovation, changement technique et agro-alimentaire, Actes et c­ ommunications, no. 8, Paris. INSEE (2007) Agriculture, nouveaux défis, Paris. Jessenne, J.-P. (2006) Les campagnes françaises entre mythe et histoire (XVIIIe - XXIe siècle), Paris. Le Play, F. (1879; new edition, Méridiens Klincksieck, 1989) La méthode sociale.

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Levy-Leboyer, M. and Morsel, H. (eds) (1994) Histoire de l’électricité en France, vol. 2: 1919–1946, Paris. Martin, M. (1992) Trois siècles de publicité en France, Paris. Mayaud, J.-L. (1991) 150 ans d’excellence agricole en France: histoire du concours général agricole, Paris. Mayaud, J.-L. (1999) La petite exploitation rurale triomphante. France XIXe siècle, Paris. Meyzie, P. (2007) La table du Sud-Ouest et l’émergence de cuisines régionales, Rennes. Mioche, P. (1987) Le Plan Monnet, Paris. Moulin, A. (1988) Les paysans dans la société française, De la Révolution à nos jours, Paris. Muratori-Philip, A. (2006) Parmentier, Paris. Nicolas, P. (1988) ‘Émergence, développement et rôle des coopératives agricoles en France. Aperçus sur une histoire séculaire’, Économie rurale, nos 184–185. Noël, G. and Willaert, E. (eds) (2007) Georges Pompidou et le monde des campagnes, Brussels. Noël, G. (2004) ‘La solidarité agricole européenne: des congrès d’agriculture à la politique agricole commune’, in Canal, J., Pécout, G. and Ridolfi, M. (eds), Sociétés rurales du XXe siècle. France, Italie, Espagne, Rome, 2004, pp. 311–325. Ory, P. (1998) Le discours gastronomique français des origines à nos jours, Paris. Paillat, M. (ed.) (1997) Le mangeur et l’animal. Mutations de l’élevage et de la consommation, Paris. Peltre, J. and Thouvenot, Cl. (eds) (1989) Alimentation et régions, Nancy. Pfirsch, J.-V. (1997) La saveur des sociétés, Rennes. Pilliet, G. (1946) Inventaire économique de la France, Paris. Poulain, J.-P. (1997) ‘Goût du terroir et tourisme vert à l’heure de l’Europe’, Ethnologie française, 27, 1, pp. 18–26. Purseigle, F. (2004) Les sillons de l’engagement. Jeunes agriculteurs et action collective, Paris. Quellier, F. (2008) La table des Français. Une histoire culturelle (XVIe-début XIXe siècles), Rennes. Risse, J. (1994) Histoire de l’élevage français, Paris. Schwartz, M. (2001) Comment les vaches sont devenues folles, Paris. SICA de Saint-Pol-de-Léon website. SNCF, Rapports de gestion. Stanziani, A. (ed.) (2004) La qualité des produits en France (XVIIIe–XXe siècles), Paris. Stanziani, A. (2005) Histoire de la qualité alimentaire, XIXe - XXe siècles, Paris. Tulard, J. (ed) (1995) ‘Agriculture’, Dictionnaire du Second Empire, Paris. Veillon, D. and Flonneau, J.-M. (eds) (1996) Le temps des restrictions en France (1939–1949), Cahiers de l’Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent, 32–33, Paris. Weber, E. (1983 translation) La fin des terroirs. La modernisation de la France rurale, 1870–1914, Paris.

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The Low Countries

Illustration 7.1  The month June in his book of hours, c. 1530, Bruges, ­miniature by Simon Bening

7 The Low Countries, 1000–1750 Reinoud Vermoesen In the Low Countries during medieval and early modern times, did rural households produce their own food supplies? How did the numerous townspeople not able to grow their own produce fare? Indeed, what was consumed by way of food and drink? In looking at these questions, one cannot ignore the urbanization process that took place in this territory during this period, or the territory’s specific rural systems. Urbanization engendered intense flows between town and countryside in this highly populated part of Europe, with its market places of Bruges, Antwerp and Amsterdam dominating long-distance trade. Within the Low Countries, the functioning of agriculture was influenced by important differences between the three major regions: the coastal wetlands, the inland region of the Low Countries and the higher region south of the Sambre-Meuse line, though it must be emphasized that the differences between them are far from absolute: each region experienced important transformation and was marked by its own individual differences.

7.1  Population and urbanization Only by scrutinizing indirect evidence is it possible to shed some light on general demographic development in the medieval Low Countries. One can argue, for example, that land reclamation and the emergence of parishes point to a steep population increase during the High Middle Ages. Though numerous parishes were founded before 1000, many were later subdivided into new parishes, and others were created just after the millennium. Also pointing to population growth was an acceleration in land reclamation and diking, especially from the second half of the eleventh century on. Between the end of the eleventh century and the mid-thirteenth, the landscape of the Low Countries was transformed as never before, although the great amount of land reclamation that occurred during this period – often organized by the elite – has to be considered as part of an evolution towards a more intensive use of land, coupled with the simultaneous privatization of (common) land. It is, however, this greater intensity in land use that stands out. Meanwhile, the southern parts of the Low Countries, especially Flanders and Brabant, were becoming one of the most densely populated areas of northern Europe, besides having the highest level of urbanization: in 1300, Bruges had 40 000 inhabi­ tants and Ghent probably as many; Ypres followed with about 30 000 and Brussels already had 18 000 (Unger, 1999). Notwithstanding the fact that the crisis of the Late Middle Ages was rather moderate –the Plague did indeed ravage the Low Countries, but the resulting mortality rate was among the lowest in Europe – some villages were abandoned, as in the Gaume area, the most southerly part of the southern Low Countries, in Zeeland and in the river area 199

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map 7 The Low Countries, 1000–1750

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The Low Countries, 1000–1750 | Chapter 7

of Gelderland (Noël, 1977; van Bavel, 2001). Elsewhere, a transformation occurred, bringing with it an increase in meadowland for cattle breeding, following a pattern already in place in late-thirteenth-century Flanders and Hainault (Verhulst, 1975). Between the end of the fifteenth century and the 1560s, the population of the Low Countries increased, which resulted in an intensification of land use. Subsequently, though, socio-economic life, especially in the southern Low Countries, was devastated by the ‘Spanish Furies’ and the civil and religious wars at the end of the sixteenth century. The population of the area that is present-day Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg rose from around 2.5 million in the 1460s to 3 million around 1550. During the second half of the sixteenth century, the population of the northern Low Countries continued to grow, rising from 1.25 million in 1550 to 1.5 million in 1600, whereas that of the southern Low Countries declined steeply from 1.65 million to 1.3 million. During the seventeenth century, there was a clear divergence in the demographic development of the northern and southern Low Countries. On the one hand was a gradual recovery in the South until the wars of the reign of Louis XIV; on the other was a boom in the population of Holland and Friesland during the mid-seventeenth century, as the North experienced its Golden Age. After the 1650s, population growth ceased in these maritime areas. In the sandy inland regions of the Republic (Twente, for instance) and parts of the Gelderland river area (Over-Betuwe), which never experienced similar demographic growth, the population continued to expand in the late seventeenth century (Brusse, 1999: 358). The eighteenth century saw the rural population of the southern Low Countries experiencing phenomenal growth, although this was largely the result of spectacular rural development during the ‘century of the countryside’. In what is now Belgium, the population increased from 1.75 million in 1650 to 2.30 million in 1750, whereas in what is now the Netherlands, it remained stable at around 1.9 million over that period. It must be underlined that, in the so-called ‘Golden Delta’ – the core region of the Low Countries (Flanders, Brabant, Zeeland and Holland) – the average distance between marketplaces (towns) was about 25 km. The dense urban network that grew up in the Middle Ages influenced the functioning of the agro-food market in a direct way: on the one hand, it gave food producers and merchants various opportunities to market their commodities; on the other, towns, being in real competition with each other, were now obliged to control incoming food flows. The importance of the urbanization process is illustrated by the so-called ‘urban ratios’, which show the urban population as a percentage of a country’s total population, the measure being based on urban centres with 10 000 or more inhabitants (a disputable parameter, because of the number of urban market centres with fewer inhabitants). In the southern Low Countries, the urban ratio dropped from 21.1 per cent in 1500 to 18.8 in 1600, though the urban population recovered towards 1700, when almost 24 per cent of the population lived in towns of over 10 000 inhabitants; one hundred years later, about one in five (18.9 per cent) of the population was a townsperson. In the northern Low Countries, the urban ratio increased from 15.8 per cent in 1500 to 24.3 in 1600 and to 33.6 in 1700, decreasing during the eighteenth century to 28.8 per cent in 1800. However, given that there were numerous small towns and marketplaces with fewer than 10 000 inhabitants, 201

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especially in the Golden Delta, it must be emphasized that urbanization was in fact much greater than the ratios suggest! That important fact aside, though, the ratios for northwest-Europe as a whole speak volumes in any comparison: 66 per cent in 1500, 82 in 1600, 13.1 in 1700 and 14.9 in 1800 (de Vries, 1984: 39).

7.2  Peasants, farmers and fishermen Food production Before an attempt can be made to discern the major processes and transformations that occurred between c. 1000 and 1750, one has to determine whether local production met local demand. In other words, one has to examine the complex relationship that existed between agrarian development in the Low Countries, the consumer patterns of the population there, the regional and long-distance trade routes and the distribution networks that existed. Few existing data show any clear distinction between the coastal and the inland regions of the Low Countries. What is known is that the coastal region never had a strong system of infields (lands around a settlement, divided into strips) and outfields (irregular patches beyond the infields), and that, in the inland region, the infields were cultivated according to the three-course system (Dejongh and Thoen, 1999: 34) and up-and-down husbandry (alternating ploughing and pasturing for a few years) was commonly practiced on the less manured and more extensively cultivated outfields. During the High Middle Ages, in both the inland and the higher regions of the southern Low Countries it was the extensive cultivation of crops that predominated (Genicot, 1982: 301), with particularly wheat production expanding in the area around Brussels. Cereals like oats were fairly common and used in the brewing industry. Barley was also a brewing cereal, but in the higher region and in the east of the northern Low Countries was replaced by spelt (Van Uytven, 2007: 61). The up-and-down husbandry in the coastal region suggests the increasing importance of sheep and cattle breeding there; in the inland region, from the second half of the twelfth century, there was a tendency towards more intensive husbandry. From the thirteenth century on, both the cultivation schemes and the organization of production in the coastal and inland regions of the Low Countries (including the Ardennes) diverged. Large, commercially orientated farms dominated the area around the Flemish town of Veurne, whereas inland areas around Oudenaarde and Aalst showed a tendency towards smaller-scale exploitation. This divergence went hand in hand with cultivation preferences on the land. Whereas wheat was favoured on the clay soils of the coastal region, rye became more popular in the inland region (Dejongh and Thoen, 1999: 37) and spelt remained predominant in many Walloon areas. Notwithstanding this distinction between the coastal and inland regions, one inland area clearly followed a particular path, the river clay area of Gelderland, which had a soil type more related to the coastal region and was one of the first areas in the Low Countries where large commercial farms emerged. These farms applied a 202



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flexible rotation scheme and convertible husbandry. The rotation course included a small proportion of wheat and a large proportion of oats and pulses, with little or no fallowing (van Bavel, 1999: 106). When necessary, arable land could be temporally converted into pasture. Striking, besides the importance of grain, is the growing acreage occupied by legumes such as beans and peas (coastal region), flax (inland region) and, to a lesser extent, turnips: in late-thirteenth-century Zeeland Flanders, two farms were reserving up to 50 per cent of the sown acreage for legumes (Dejongh and Thoen, 1999). Near Gouda, Breda and the Land van Heusden, hop-poles were a common sight as early as the 1350s. The production of hops (‘green gold’) spread during the fifteenth century to the surroundings of ’s-Hertogenbosch and, during the sixteenth and seventeenth, to the north of Drenthe (Bieleman, 2010). Hops became so important that townspeople set up hop-poles within the town walls of Aalst in inland Flanders. Near Ghent and Aalst, the labour-intensive cultivation of flax (used as raw material for linen) expanded considerably from the fourteenth century on, partly replacing the cultivation of other commercial crops formerly utilized in the once booming Flemish, urban cloth industries. Madder, weld and woad, used by urban dyers, were very common. Turnips (an animal food crop) were already being sown on fallow land in the thirteenth century, but became really common after the fifteenth. Lastly was the spread of viniculture perhaps a surprising development in the Low Countries. In 1120, for instance, Godfried with the Beard, Count of Leuven and Duke of Lower Lorraine, ordered the construction of a vineyard near his stronghold in Brabantine Leuven (Van Uytven, 2007: 27). Indeed, the production of local wine, especially in the Hageland, near Leuven, and in the surroundings of Liège and Namur, thrived quite well until the fourteenth century. Thereafter, climate change and the increasing uncertainty during the Hundred Years War put a stop to wine-growing, a capitalintensive activity. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, the soil condition of the Holland and West-Frisian peat area had deteriorated. Due to the success of (commercial) peat digging, overall surface levels had dropped and this in turn had caused a process of saturation. It became almost impossible to grow winter cereals on the saturated fields, which resulted in the transformation of arable land into pasture at an increasing rate. A commercial graziery and dairy industry emerged in these parts (Gijsbers, 1999: 33), the process being stimulated by expanding markets, particularly in the southern Low Countries (de Vries and van der Woude, 1997: 197). In other peat areas, the rural population dealt with these problems in its own particular way. In southern Holland’s Krimpenerwaard, farmers concentrated on dairying and the production of hemp (Kamermans, 1999: 21). In these wetlands, only a small portion of land could be cultivated (and manured), and the majority of the area was used for pasturing. In the eastern provinces of the northern Low Countries, common wasteland surrounded the arable open fields of the villages (de Vries and van der Woude, 1997: 196). Farmers, self-organized, controlled access to these wastelands, which provided grazing for livestock (in turn providing manure) and sods for the open fields. This was especially the case in Drenthe, less in the Veluwe or in Salland. Surpluses of 203

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000

Figure 7.1 Share of produce in the Land of Aalst, inland Flanders, 1680–1790 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1680

1690

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Source: Vermoesen, 2010: 8.

land in Drenthe, Gelderland and Overrijsel were rather small and irregular, and were made available chiefly by the landowning gentry, the Church and tithe collectors. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the acreage devoted to cereals continued to shrink, whereas that devoted to fodder crops increased. This process occurred especially in the mixed-farming regions with peasant farms, such as inland Flanders (Figure 7.1; Vermoesen, 2010). Among bread cereals, wheat became the most important, at the expense of rye and spelt (Dejongh and Thoen, 1999: 49). It is, however, the increase in fodder crops, especially clover, that can be deemed one of the most striking features of agricultural development in the early modern period. Although fodder crops were already being sown in Flemish fields in the sixteenth century, they really became omnipresent during the eighteenth. Because they were sown under a cover crop such as winter cereals or flax, they provided grazing after that cover crop had been harvested. Clover, turnips or spurry not only made it possible to eliminate fallow, they provided manure through their enrichment of the soil with nitrogen and made stall feeding possible. Other crops such as flax, hops or oil plants maintained a steady position and continued to play an important role in agricultural production. However, it is the emergence of the potato during the seventeenth century that catches the eye. Although it remains rather uncertain when exactly the spread of this new crop took place, it is possible to catch a glimpse of the diffusion processes that occurred. 204



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Illustration 7.2  The discovery of the potato, oldest European image of the plant, 1588, aquarel by an unknown master as an ­illustration to the scientific description by Carolus Clusius in his ­R ariorum ­plantarum historia

Already known in the sixteenth century as a flowering plant, the potato appeared in the fields during the last quarter of the seventeenth. Probably introduced from the British Isles, it was cultivated in the western parts of Flanders from the 1670s onwards. From there, it spread eastward through the rest of Flanders, to Brabant and later to Zeeland and to Holland. Meanwhile, it had been introduced in the area of Houffalize 205

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000

and Stavelot-Malmédy, in accordance with cultivation patterns already in place in the Dauphiné. Notwithstanding the lead of the southern part of the Low Countries in introducing the potato, it was in the northern part that this food crop and its production for market spread most rapidly. By the end of the eighteenth century, the potato was firmly rooted, as it were, in agricultural production schemes in the Low Countries. In the course of the eighteenth century, the peasant farms of inland Flanders tended towards miniaturization and fragmentation, with small farms being split up into even smaller units. That this process, a result of enormous population pressure, could take place was a consequence of the ‘successes of the rural economy’: the introduction of the potato, the importance of Flemish labour-intensive agriculture and the significance of proto-industrial linen production (Vermoesen, 2010). In coastal Zeeland Flanders, quite the opposite happened (van Cruyningen, 2000). During the seventeenth century, large farms emerged there that showed a trend towards specialization. Rather than spreading the risks, they concentrated on a wheat monoculture and dispensed with all other production strategies; at the same time, they maximized profit by reducing local labour input and increasing seasonal labour. Large farms were also quite successful in the Gelderland river area, even though they applied totally different strategies. In Over-Betuwe, large farms combined wheat and oil-plant cultivation with graziery and horse breeding (Brusse, 1999: 359). Further north, the coastal areas saw an important shift towards horticulture. At the same time, the flexible rotation course and the convertible husbandry of the river clay area spread into them, whereas little change occurred in the inland areas of the northern Low Countries, which remained dominated by rye cultivation. Early modern Friesland experienced both transformation and stabilization. Whereas large graziery and cattle breeding farms dominated the clay area, stimulating among other things the export of butter, there were in the southwest of Friesland still peasants combining small-scale agriculture with fishing and shipping (Knibbe, 2006: 251). During the seventeenth century, these small farms disappeared, making way for larger farms, a trend witnessed in other parts of the northern Low Countries. The tendency to specialize in fishing or shipping, letting agricultural activities fall, could be discerned in particular places all over the Low Countries – especially in the coastal areas – where inland and saltwater fishing were firmly rooted in the regional economies. It is assumed that, during the Middle Ages and the early sixteenth century, inland (freshwater) fishing was at least as important as saltwater fishing (de Vries and van der Woude, 1997: 237). Often practised on a part-time basis and part of income-pooling (rural) household strategies, inland fishing was concentrated mainly in two areas: first, that of the major rivers and the Zeeland delta; and second, that of the Zuiderzee and the IJ. The catch found its way to the cities, where up to half of the market space was reserved for freshwater fish. By the 1650s, the great days of freshwater fishing had passed. It had become increasingly unviable as a result of continual warfare and the scarcity of labour. In the Middle Ages, the Flemish coast and the Zeeland estuary formed the chief focus of the coastal fishery, stimulated by the proximity of the urban markets of Flanders and Brabant. During the sixteenth century, however, that focus drifted to villages along Holland’s dune coast and on the northern islands, as a result of the earlier hostilities 206



The Low Countries, 1000–1750 | Chapter 7

between Charles V and Francis I near the Flemish coast, the fishery moreover being able to profit from the increasing urbanization in the northern Low Countries and the growing demand (for plaice) from the German territories. But this success was brief, fishing conditions deteriorating as a result of rising sea levels pushing salt water into the Zuiderzee basin. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these villages were subject to severe depopulation. Although fishermen caught herring along the Flemish coast and in the Zeeland Delta, it was not suitable for processing as a quality salted product and was sold, fresh or lightly salted, on local markets. From the first half of the fourteenth century on, fishermen of the Low Countries started catching herring farther from shore, near the Dogger Bank and along the English coast. The breakthrough came after 1400, when refined processing techniques and the development of a floating factory – the herring bus – allowed fishermen to prepare the herring at sea, without returning to shore immediately after the catch. Known as the ‘great fishery’, the catching of herring on the open sea and the gutting and salting of them on board ship was part of the trafiek industry, i.e. delivering an unfinished product to port, processing and packing it on shore and exporting the finished product (de Vries and van der Woude, 1997: 243). One of the arguments to explain the decline of the herring industry concerns changing consumer preferences. In the course of the second half of the seventeenth century, diet underwent a transformation in favour of meat consumption. De Vries and van der Woude claim that, from the 1660s on, agricultural produce became relatively cheaper than fish (de Vries and van der Woude, 1997: 238). They argue that fish held a more important place in the sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century diet than was later the case; the many varieties of freshwater fish were particularly popular, more so than salted herring, a luxury product at the time.

Agricultural productivity There is no hard evidence of a significant increase in arable productivity between the second half of the eleventh century and the middle of the thirteenth century (Dejongh and Thoen, 1999: 36). The yields per unit of land were probably lower than in the following centuries and production gains were realized through the extension of the land cultivated. The fields around the villages, the infields, were cultivated according to a three-course system, the outfields further away from the village centre according to a kind of convertible (up-and-down) husbandry. The latter, less fertile and less welldrained, were only temporarily sown with crops. During the thirteenth century, the differences between infields and outfields gradually became less pronounced, which could point to a process of intensification. Especially the outfields received more labour input and more manure, making it possible to put them under the plough regularly. In some areas, such as the eastern provinces of the northern Low Countries, in the Campine region and parts of Wallonia, common wastelands still played an important role until the end of the Ancien Régime (Dejongh and Thoen, 1999: 45). Although yields and yield ratios reached unprecedented levels, it 207

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000

is the progressive reduction of fallow and convertible husbandry in some areas –inland Flanders, for instance, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries – that stands out. In the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, peasants and farmers achieved a gradual increase in productivity, characterized as a ‘growth acceleration’, rather than an ‘agricultural revolution’. The elimination of fallow in the crop rotations resulted in a rising proportion of animal feed crops such as clover and turnips, which in turn led to a qualitative improvement in and substantial expansion of manure production and consequently of rural production (Dejongh and Thoen, 1999: 56). Although some regions where fallow was still frequently a part of crop rotation (French Flanders, for example) had noticeably higher net yields, other regions where fallow was reduced had more agricultural output per unit of area.

Features of  ‘Flemish’ and ‘Dutch’ husbandry This brief overview reveals some important patterns influencing both the production and the consumption of agricultural produce. First is the striking crumbling of the dominant position of cereals during the period under investigation. Quite early, industrial crops found their way into the rotation courses applied in the agriculture of the Low Countries and their presence was emphasized by the rise of horticulture in the northern areas. Again, regional differences were at play, but the culture of cash crops was an important feature of an agricultural system not exclusively focused on food production. Moreover, both ‘Flemish’ and ‘Dutch’ husbandry were known for their ability to integrate a variety of crops into the rotation courses. Second, the presence of pasture land and the increasing proportion of fodder crops point to the significance of cattle breeding for dairy and meat production. Third, on the eve of the industrial era, a new crop appeared in the fields – the potato – whose production became very important from the second half of the eighteenth century on, although the crop had featured for a number of decades already. Remaining open is the question of what the flows were between town and countryside, which has to do with the population structure of the Low Countries. More particularly, who fed the numerous townspeople and what distributions circuits functioned in the various regions?

7.3  Agro-food circuits Generally speaking, food surpluses in the Low Countries easily found their way from production areas to nearby marketplaces, where they were processed and sold. Transported by horse-drawn carts or carried on backs, the food was brought into the towns by local farmers – acting as middlemen for merchants or for their own account – and women and children. Within the urban boundaries, it was carried to urban warehouses or markets by members of specialist crafts. Among the most important buyers of grain were bakers, brewers and millers, who processed cereals for local consumers. In some cases, the marketplaces formed gateways to even bigger urban centres, this urban network often being connected by waterways, on which bargees distributed agricultural food surpluses over large areas. 208



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Although accurate, this brief sketch of the agro-food transport network, oversimplifies the historical reality. Two important features have to be taken into account. The first is the indisputable regional differences that the brief survey of agrarian development points to. In some areas, such as Groningen, Zeeland Flanders, Walloon Brabant or Hesbaye, large commercial farms were able to export grain. Yet other regions, such as northern Holland and parts of Friesland, were dependent on cereal imports, all the while exporting dairy or fattened oxes. Regional specialization resulted in trade routes, commercial networks and trade centres for agricultural products. The second is the enormous number of townspeople that needed to be fed. This had already been a manifest problem in the thirteenth century, i.e. in the early phases of rapid urban growth (Unger, 1999: 329). It created a major concern for both urban and regional governments throughout the preindustrial era and resulted in strategies to control the import of food supplies and the export of surpluses. Towns were enabled to exercise their hub function through the market monopolies they received from central government during the Middle Ages and subsequently (van Bavel, 2010: 229), and larger centres were even able to develop into staple towns (Amsterdam, Antwerp and Ghent, for example), dominating both regional and interregional trade.

Grain trade It has long been recognized that grain shipments were entering the Low Countries, especially Flanders, as early as the thirteenth century (Unger, 1999: 332): there are indeed traces of thirteenth-century flows between the surplus area of Normandy and Flanders and it is believed that Flemish towns were also importing Baltic grain then (Abel, 1980: 20). Very well known, too, is the importance of Bruges – a member of the Hanseatic League – as distribution centre for interregional grain trade. Furthermore, there are indications of import routes from various territories with surpluses, such as Artois, Normandy, Picardy, the Baltic area and even England, which made the Low Countries less vulnerable to crisis situations (Tits-Dieuaide, 1985). Fifteenth-century Holland depended almost entirely on grain imports (van Tielhof, 1995 and 2002), which made it unique as a preindustrial area. Whereas other regions – or, more precisely, their urban centres – drew in cereals in part or entirely from their own hinterland, this was virtually denied Holland and Friesland, due to soil deterioration there. These provinces consequently came to rely quite early on surpluses produced in other regions. During the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, it was grain from northern France and some areas of the southern Low Countries that constituted the greater part of the vital imports. However, political troubles at the end of the fifteenth century and increasing demand at the beginning of the sixteenth prompted a shift to grain from the Baltic region, especially rye. Although these two regions accounted for the bulk of all imported cereals, they were not the sole suppliers. This regional dispersion led to the emergence of a number of marketplaces, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp in particular dominating interregional flows, albeit that Delft, Dordrecht and later on Amsterdam increasingly won ground. 209

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During the sixteenth century and through to the first half of the eighteenth, Amsterdam boomed as a centre of the interregional grain trade. In terms of both local and foreign supplies (from France and Spain), merchants from Amsterdam were indeed well-positioned to respond to the increasing demand for grain. Backed by superior shipping technology and advanced business strategies (risk mitigation, due to the shared ownership of vessels), they dominated the long-distance grain trade, adapting to new challenges even when faced with increasing risks during the wars of the seventeenth century. By organizing convoys and acting on commission (assuming the foreign owners’ risk), they remained successful for decades. As late as the 1730s, indeed, shippers from the northern Low Countries were still carrying the bulk of rye passing through the Sound (de Vries and van der Woude, 1997: 415). This ‘mother of all trades’ generated various employment opportunities not only for the sailors manning the ships and lighters, but also for the strong-backed men who carried the grain into the warehouses, where it was measured, and for women, who had the essential task, especially reserved for them, of regularly turning the stored grain. There were also the grain brokers, middlemen in selling and buying at the grain exchange. The grain trade also generated important processing industries. Though not in the immediate vicinity of grain-cultivating areas, fifteenth-century breweries and seventeenth-century distilleries in Holland flourished and were able to export (Van Uytven, 2007: 81), a masterly example of industrious endeavour by an area not able to produce enough food for its inhabitants and without sufficient fresh water supplies. Compared to that of Holland’s brewing cities, the development of the Brabantine towns was certainly ‘small beer’, especially considering that, in the course of the eighteenth century, the southern Low Countries became a grain exporting region.

Rural strategies Analysis of the food market in the rural Low Countries requires a prior, theoretical distinction between, on the one hand, all those areas where households produced most of their own food and drink, and were dependent only occasionally on market supplies, and, on the other, the more market-orientated areas, where wage labour was common. The distinction is thus between peasant societies and commercialized rural communities. As we shall see later, making a sharp contrast between the two makes an absolute mockery of historical reality, but can nevertheless contribute towards a better understanding of how rural areas functioned. The key differences between large (tenant) farms in commercial areas and the larger farms in peasant areas concerned the way rural wage labour was paid and how food was included in wage payments. Farmers in the commercial regions employed a great number of day labourers and servants, whereas the few larger farms in the peasant societies made use of the abundance of cheap peasant labour. This structural difference affected the rural food market. To illustrate this, we take the Cense-du-Sart farm in the Brabantine village of Ernage in a fertile and commercial area, near Gembloux, where wage payments were composed of foodstuffs (mostly grain), livestock (pigs) and money (Lambrecht, 2003: 247), which shows that, in a way, the food and labour 210



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markets in the commercial areas were intertwined. This was, however, not entirely the case in peasant areas. There, wage payments were partially in the form of reciprocal exchange, since the peasant households could rely on their own food production; farmers offered agricultural services (ploughing and transport) to peasants in exchange for their labour. Approaching the matter cautiously, we can even discern an evolution in the way rural food markets interacted with the rural labour market. As van Cruyningen has revealed for commercial farms in Zeeland Flanders, farmers increasingly specialized in wheat production, ditching such other income-diversification activities as cheese making and brewing (van Cruyningen, 2000). For their part, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century farmers in peasant inland Flanders extended their range of activities, particularly in food production. Farmers in the surroundings of Aalst offered a broad variety of agricultural services and supplied bread and beer for the peasant community in exchange for manual labour (Vermoesen, 2010). These changes in household strategy assume diverging patterns between market-oriented areas and peasant societies. Whereas reciprocal exchange was ubiquitous and an early modern version of the nineteenthcentury truck system emerged among peasants in inland areas, cash remuneration for wage labour came increasingly to be applied by commercial farmers in the coastal area. In other words, food as means of payment became more important in the former and less important in the latter.

The power of towns Townspeople, as landowners or as rentiers, are all too often regarded as intruders in the countryside, and towns are all too often seen narrowly as marketplaces for selling goods. The countryside, on the other hand, is too often seen as merely a lucky dip, producing surprise packages of migrants, food supplies and sometimes cheap labour (Vermoesen, 2008). But urban policies and urban and rural practises can diverge, and town and countryside relations can be described as symbiotic or dialectic. As mentioned, urban governments applied a broad range of legal means to ensure continuous flows of food into their towns, imposing staple obligations and prohibiting rural markets in order to direct rural food supplies into their agglomerations. Fourteenth-century Ghent enlarged its own staple by decreeing that all cereals coming downstream from Artois, Hainault or southern Flanders had to be transported by its own bargees. On arrival in Ghent, cargoes were required to be offloaded and a quarter offered for sale on the grain market (the Korenmarkt), thereby enabling urban bakers, brewers and other consumers to buy cereals before the merchants could. By enforcing staple obligations, Ghent, Groningen and other cities, too, made sure that a continuous flow of food entered their walls (Stabel, 1999). Urban governments went even further in enforcing their control. In recent historiography, urban pre-industrial market policy has often been set against the liberal doctrine of laissez-faire (Persson, 1999), with paternalistic strategies being traditionally ascribed to pre-industrial urban governments, whereas the liberal doctrine emerged only during the nineteenth century. Although the thinking in both cases is merely the 211

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result of sophisticated conceptualization, it provides us with a glimpse of the functioning of pre-industrial (food) markets, as will be seen. Local paternalistic strategies aimed at bringing producers and consumers closer together. One looked to promote direct transactions between rural producers and consumers, and resulted in the market being controlled. Fixed market hours and restricted access favoured local people above merchants. Both producers and merchants were also limited in their freedom of movement, being unable to bargain with each other until the needs of local consumers had been met. Furthermore, only the quantity – often restricted – offered on the market could be bought. Sale by sample or buying on credit, when crops were still in the fields, was prohibited. Visual appraisal of quality and direct price negotiation constituted the leitmotivs of the medieval and early modern food market. Towns are not mere expressions of their function as markets. Although the abovementioned regulations restricted flows between town and countryside, and notwithstanding the crucial position of urban markets, the flows could be even more intense. The need for food supplies prompted townspeople to invest more directly in agriculture, which resulted in their immediate involvement in the economic functioning of their town’s hinterland. The polders of the Low Countries are visual testimonies to this urban influence. Townspeople invested in the rationalization of these fertile lands intended for large-scale agricultural production for the urban markets (Soens, 2009: 133). Vice versa, as Bas van Bavel has mooted, rural food production and agricultural development could even be an explanation for urbanization, as the case of Holland demonstrates (van Bavel, 2002: 30). Although this brief survey of the major flows between regions and between town and countryside might suggest that urban merchants dominated food flows, recent research shows the outlines of more complex distribution networks. Moreover, the shape the actual distribution of food at household level took remains vague, a reason to examine certain circuits that functioned in the town and the countryside, providing food supplies to urban and rural households.

Flows from countryside to town Who was involved in food flows into the towns? Having already mentioned the complex interregional grain trade and the crucial position of merchants in, for instance, sixteenth-century Holland, we now turn to food supplies from town hinterlands. Scattered evidence points to the existence of many circuits in which producers, brokers, retailers and consumers interacted. Circuits differed, depending on the kind of commodity. We can therefore distinguish between grain flows and the flows of ‘small produce’ (eggs, fruit and legumes). It seems that grain transport and distribution was in the hands of a small number of large farmers and brokers. Peasants and small farmers generally lacked the means and time for this, and any surplus they produced was used primarily for reciprocal exchange with the large farmers of their local economy (Lambrecht, 2003; Vermoesen, 2010). During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the large commercial and 212



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highly specialized farms in the west of Zeeland Flanders applied a number of profitmaximizing strategies (van Cruyningen, 2000: 363), their size enabling them to produce surpluses, even in minor harvest years. Unlike small farmers or peasants, who were generally obliged to sell their production to middlemen when they needed cash, large farmers could ‘wait and see’. Those middlemen could be urban merchants (from Sluis) or shipmen-traders, the so-called Oosthouters, who, to accumulate grain, profited from the fact that small producers had no financial buffer. The speculative attitude of large farmers, strengthened by their bargaining position and their financial reserves, made them truly market players: either they used the services of the middlemen or they shipped the grain on their own account to brokers who tried to sell it at a high price (van Cruyningen, 2000: 208). Similar behaviour can be noticed in early-eighteenthcentury Doel, in the Scheldt-polders near Antwerp, where the commercial farmers were not at all keen to offer their produce directly after harvest. Rather, it was only from winter on that grain shipments became more frequent, booming in the early spring months, following the cyclical movement of grain prices (Soens, 2009: 149). The same was true in the Gelderland river area, where farmers depended on boats to carry their trade into Arnhem, Nijmegen or the urban centres of Holland (Brusse, 1999: 274). Even farmers of inland Flanders displayed the same speculative behaviour; an ever-smaller group, they used their capital goods (horses, carts and ploughs) as a way of attracting labour and agricultural or industrial output from peasant households.

Food distribution The actual functioning of grain flows into towns can be described as the way in which rural households dealt with transaction costs. Market activity is always associated with certain costs: buyers and sellers have to spend time and money to acquire market information, to negotiate and to travel. Participating in a certain circuit was therefore the result of taking into account the transaction costs involved. However, by accumulating commodities, farmers and brokers could spread transaction costs over large quantities, which explains their (more) intensive market orientation, compared with the market orientation of peasant households. The petty household production of legumes, eggs, and poultry received less attention of the large farmers. In inland Flanders, peasant households, especially the women and children, sold vegetables, fruit and dairy products to obtain some cash. They had access to public markets or to retailers who offered the produce in their shops: orchards near Arnhem and Nijmegen, for instance, provisioned the urban communities with fruit (Brusse, 1999: 282). Considering the dense network of marketplaces, small towns and large cities in the Low Countries, one can assume that this small-scale production was widespread. In the highly urbanized Low Countries, the distribution of food took place via two main circuits: the public market and later the shop. The selling of goods in towns was subject to myriad regulations and was controlled mostly by mercers’ guilds. As powerful corporations, these guilds tried to include everybody who was not under the restriction of another guild and who engaged in retailing-activities (using weights 213

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Illustration 7.3 Market scene, c. 1550, oil painting on oak by Pieter Aertsen

and measures). Nevertheless, the fact that retailers who sold their wares at the weekly markets were not expected to join a mercers’ guild meant that opportunities were created for itinerant rural sellers, although it can be argued that these last were viewed by the guilds as a menace to their practices. Though both market and shop circuits functioned alongside each other, there was a clear trend towards specialization. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the relative importance of shopkeepers increased at the expense of stallholders, at least in the mercers’ accounts. In the mid-eighteenth century, specialization led to a situation whereby more than half of all registered retailers of the mercers’ guilds of Antwerp, Leiden, ’s-Hertogenbosch and Zwolle were selling food or beverages. Because of the time it took to travel long-distance trade routes and of the fact that food had to be preserved in one way or another, fresh food was quite scarce. There were a number of methods to preserve food and they remained virtually unchanged from medieval and early modern times to the nineteenth century: depending on the kind of food preserved, they were drying, smoking and salting; there was also butter- and cheese-making, which can be considered as ways of preserving milk. Drying was employed by Mediterraneans to preserve the fruit they exported – dates, raisins and currants, for instance – and was also used for pulses, especially peas. It made long-distance transport from the Mediterranean production area possible. It was also used in the Low Countries for fish – dried plaice, stockfish and basket-herring being widespread there. Smoking as a preservation method was chiefly associated with pork (ham and bacon); but was also used for herring (red herring) and eel. Salting, in the case of meat, concerned primarily pork and beef, mutton having usually to be eaten fresh; in the case of fish, it concerned especially herring, cod and eel, which were consumed in abundance in their salted state. The process of food preservation clearly peaked in the autumn, when pigs and oxen were slaughtered. 214



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7.4  Changes in consumer behaviour Meat, grain, fish and water Because of a lack of adequate sources it has remained very difficult to determine what long-term changes in consumer behaviour took place in the Low Countries during especially the Middle Ages. Save for some evidence regarding consumer behaviour among the feudal elite (including churchmen), there is little information about the food consumption patterns of large sections of the population. The same is very much true for the early modern period, albeit that the relevant sources are somewhat more numerous and informative. Notwithstanding the gaps in source material, there is a clear impression of a ‘meateating Europe’ coming into being in the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; from the fifteenth, moreover, as revealed by Fernand Braudel, meat was in abundant supply for large groups of society (Braudel, 1973: 127), although regional differences, as well as contrasting features between town and countryside, must be taken into account. Furthermore some historians are convinced that the per capita consumption of meat in the southern Low Countries was higher in the twelfth century than in the fifteenth (Thoen and Soens, 2010), the availability of common land giving peasant societies access to grazing and hence to animal products, and the early commercialization process in sheep and pig herding in the coastal wetlands providing meat for the urban settlements. They also emphasize the crucial turning-point in the course of the twelfth century, when diet became unbalanced in favour of cereal consumption. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, periodic upswings in purchasing power coincided only partly with growing meat consumption. Wilhelmina Gijsbers, for her part, points to a decreasing amount of meat in the European diet in the course of the fifteenth century (Gijsbers, 1999: 26). Only wealthy people had access to fresh meat, the less wealthy having to turn to boiled, salted or cured meat ( Jose-Van Putten, 1995: 91), although even this kind of meat became rare in the cereal-dominated diet of late medieval and early modern times. It is assumed that, before wheat and rye came increasingly to dominate in cereal cultivation, it was other cereals and turnips that formed the main basis for porridge, which was flavoured chiefly with local seasoning, such as mustard. Widespread in the north of the northern Low Countries was hotch-potch. Bread, on the other hand, was considered a luxury and was reserved for townspeople and the rural elite. Generally speaking, a ‘cereal curtain’ came into being, stretching horizontally from the North Sea, south of Holland, to as far as Russia. Wheat could be grown to the south of that line, but not to the north, where the climate demanded its replacement by rye. This gave rise to a regional distinction in the pattern of bread consumption: rye bread to the north, wheat bread to the south, albeit that wealthier people north of the line preferred wheat bread to rye bread ( Jose-Van Putten, 1995: 83). All in all, bread cereals became omnipresent from the Late Middle Ages on and formed the habitual diet for the vast majority of people for centuries. Scattered sources point to a variety of beverages being consumed until the fourteenth century. Although vital for human existence, water was considered perilous 215

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to drink, particularly when drawn from stagnant pools or the like. Urban populations were nevertheless forced to establish a regular supply of fresh water drawn from wells or transported along specially constructed canals or even by horse and cart. The need for fresh water indeed gave rise to an innovation, the inter-regional trade of mineral water. This burgeoned during the seventeenth century, but had in fact begun as early as the sixteenth, which saw the towns of Spa, near Liège, and Toenisstein, in Germany, being among the first to export the product (Van Uytven, 2007: 46, 147). One cannot underrate the effect of the numerous days of fasting instituted by the Church and aimed especially at reducing meat consumption, which partly explains the presence of fish in the weekly diet. Freshwater fish such as bream, carp, eel, perch, pike and roach found their way into villages and cities. From the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries onwards, Hanseatic merchants supplied the northern and southern Low Countries with dried cod from Norway and salted herring from the coast of Skåne. Coastal fishermen provisioned consumers both inland and abroad with dried plaice or lightly salted herring. Stockfish and herring were very popular, but the herring caught near the Dogger Bank and along the English coast was ­considered a luxury and was the preserve of the wealthy.

Regional dietary differences It must be emphasised that regional differences remained striking. Whereas inland areas showed a clear preference for pork, coastal areas preferred mutton. In the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, urban meat-consumers revealed a partiality for beef. In the Brabantine towns especially, that partiality reflected the impact of the long-distance cattle trade; in coastal areas, it reflected the regional specialization of ox fattening. From the fourteenth century on, the small town of Lier in Brabant imposed staple rights. Despite strong competition from Antwerp and ’s-Hertogenbosch, Lier’s cattle market enjoyed considerable success until the mid- seventeenth century, particularly as a result of the introduction of a municipal institution that provided credit to cattle buyers; thereafter, however, it declined, its heyday over. Antwerp had already set up its own market in 1617 and allowed buyers to fatten oxen in the polders surrounding the city (Willems, 2009). Holland had a long tradition of importing oxen from Schleswig-Holstein and the Kingdom of Denmark (Gijsbers, 1999). This commercial connection had been established during the fourteenth century and remained an important feature of the long-distance trade. However, it has to be said that, despite those imports, large sections of the population in both town and countryside were restricted to a very unbalanced cereal-orientated diet, supplemented with tubers and legumes. Furthermore, there was a social bias in meat consumption, probate inventories drawn up in inland Flanders showing that there was relatively more meat in the wealthier than in the less fortunate households; This is not to say that these last did not consume meat – they would have eaten pork, if anything – but that it indicates that wealthier families could store preserved meat. 216



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In its turn, the expansion of the dairy industry in Holland and Friesland influenced the composition of the daily diet in the northern Low Countries. From the sixteenth century on, dairy produce won ground, offsetting the loss of proteins resulting from decreasing meat consumption. Especially cheese became widely popular ( Jose-Van Putten, 1995: 94). Foreigners even mocked the ‘Flemish’ (a term probably used for all inhabitants of the Low Countries) for their copious consumption of butter in the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (van Winter, 2007, 190). Milk consumption remained low, especially in the towns. Milk turned sour rapidly, which made longhaul transport – and likewise long-haul trade – impossible. To ensure a regular supply of fresh milk, townspeople kept a few cows, a practise often regarded as a health risk. Country people mixed milk and its derivatives mostly with cereals or turnips to make porridge. Milk, curds and whey were really more food than drink. In the dairy regions of Holland and Friesland, country people drank buttermilk. From the 1680s on, a number of new elements began to feature in the diet established in the Low Countries in medieval and early modern times. One of them, the introduction and spread of the potato, affected large swathes of the population and marked the end of the occasionally oppressive dominance of cereals (wheat, rye, barley, and oats), until then the staple ingredient of diet (porridge, gruel, flour, pancakes, bread, waffles and beer). Grain had been truly omnipresent ( Jose-Van Putten, 1995: 97). Although tubers, legumes, dairy produce and fish had supplemented the meat-poor diet, cereals preponderated over all other ingredients, which unbalanced diet and made it quite vulnerable. Gradually, this critical situation improved. The consumption of vegetables, cultivated in some regions and near the towns, increased, but, more importantly, it was the advent of the potato that helped poorer people to cope with the harsh reality of daily life. Although cultivation of this ‘new’ crop spread very slowly, it made the population less dependent on bread cereals. Its importance can be measured by the fact that a given acreage of it could feed double the amount of people than the same acreage of cereals. In a way, the spread of the potato contributed to the growth of the rural population in the course of the eighteenth century.

From ingredients to meals and beverages Meals in preindustrial times were usually limited to two a day (there were sometimes three). For most social groups, moreover, they were uniform, served warm and with bread; the first was taken at dawn, the second around noon. As it was unpractical to serve more than one dish at a time, and taking into account the fact that baking and roasting were considered unsafe, due to the fire hazard, all meals were cooked in a single kettle. Ingredients were added as available in the household; coincidence, therefore, rather than the sense of taste, influenced the seasoning. Even meat was rarely baked, but rather was added to the kettle on the open fire and cooked with other ingredients, such as cereals or tubers, the result being a porridge that could be eaten with lumps of bread. Baked or grilled meat could be considered a luxury, because the meat had to be fresh, something that only wealthy people could afford, the less well-off having to make do with boiled, salted or cured meat. The copious use of salt as seasoning and 217

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Illustration 7.4  ‘Om een lecker beetken int vleeschuys te cryghen’ (Looking for a nice bite in the meat house), second half 16th century, engraving by P. vander Borcht

as preservative made the preindustrial mealtime a thirst-inducing event, which could explain the abundant consumption of beverages, especially of beer. Before 1300, gruit beer dominated the Low Countries. Gruit was a herbal and plant mixture of mostly sweet gale, but often resin, ginger, cumin or anise; it was for its conservation qualities and to improve flavour and aroma that it was added to brewages based on oats, barley, spelt and wheat. For its part, hopped beer from northern Germany was already being imported into the northern Low Countries in the twelfth century. Adding the hop served to conserve the beer for longer and its use explains the long trade routes between Bremen or Hamburg and the Low Countries. As early as the fourteenth century, the Count of Holland was permitting local brewers to use this climbing plant instead of gruit. Towns in Holland and Utrecht switched to hop beers before their counterparts in Flanders and Brabant, and beer from Amsterdam, Delft and especially Haarlem and Gouda found its way into Friesland, Zeeland and Flanders (Van Uytven, 2007: 80). As soon as brewers in the southern Low Countries had mastered hop brewing, imports from the north decreased. Gouda reacted to this threat by introducing kuit, a less hopped beer, which again gave Holland the lead in brewing. Brabant, more 218



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than Flanders, tried to reproduce the new beer that was being imported and it was during the sixteenth century that the brewing industries of Leuven, Hoegaarden and Antwerp finally took off, stimulated by increasing domestic demand. In the northern Low Countries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, beer encountered strong competition from other beverages, as we shall see later, but in the southern it remained dominant. In Holland, Amsterdam and Rotterdam took over the lead from Delft, Gouda and Haarlem, and even Breda experienced a brief boom. In the southern Low Countries, only the Brabantine towns developed successful beer exporting industries, the Flemish towns being unable to push further than their immediate hinterlands; Indeed, Flemish urban brewers met strong competition from rural breweries and superior beers such as Caves (Lier), Peterman (Leuven), Pharao (Brussels) and beer from Hoegaarden. Notwithstanding the ubiquitousness of beer, the momentary popularity of mead and cider, and the abundance of water and milk, perhaps the most striking feature, beverage-wise, of the period between 1000 and 1300 was the success enjoyed by local and foreign wine. Wine production and the wine trade thrived. Demand increased to such an extent that vineyards spread across the southern Low Countries. However, although local wine found its way into villages and cities, consumers preferred Rhenish, French and Greek wines (Van Uytven, 2007: 27). Despite growing local demand, wine – especially of foreign origin – remained a luxury commodity, particularly when, from the fifteenth century on, imports from Poitou and Cologne, as well as local production, declined. Gradually, vineyards near Leuven and Hoegaarden fell into neglect and disappeared, and consumers came increasingly to disfavour local wines or petits vins, as they were described by the authorities of Namur. From the sixteenth century on, wines from France, Burgundy and the Rhine and Mosel valleys were among the most popular in the Low Countries. Towards the end of the Ancien Régime, the Low Countries experienced both a veritable invasion of brandy and an initial introduction to colonial beverages. Although brandy (distilled from wine) was already known in the fifteenth century, Holland and, to a lesser extent, Flemish merchants began in the sixteenth to import it from southwestern France (Van Uytven 2007: 115). Increasing demand stimulated the development of local substitutes and, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, an increase in the number of distilleries. Again, Holland took the lead and was even in a position to export Dutch gin (jenever – distilled from grain) from Schiedam and Rotterdam, besides taking advantage of its trade routes to use Brazilian sugarcane to distil rum. During the eighteenth century, the number of local distilleries in the southern Low Countries rose, causing imports of jenever from Holland to decline. Finally, there were the exotic luxuries that made their appearance from the seventeenth century on, i.e. chocolate, coffee and tea, which found their way into the homes of wealthy, urban households, and thereafter throughout the Low Countries. The end of that century saw the emergence of ‘coffee houses’ and ‘tea salons’ for men and women respectively (Blondé and Van Damme, 2007: 66). In the countryside, the diffusion process varied. In Weesperkarspel, coffee cans and teapots popped up before the end of the seventeenth century (van Koolbergen, 1997: 144). In the river area of Gelderland, 219

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Table 7.2 Shares of total expenditure on food: Antwerp, mid-eighteenth century Bread cereals

26.08

Brewing cereals

5.5

Gin cereals

3.37

Other cereals

3.95

Butter

12.1

Potatoes

0.03

Vegetables

1.05

Cheese

0.56

Meat

23.78

Fish

2.59

Salt

1.14

Wine

14.38

Coffee

3.38

Tea

0.28

Rice

0.17

Sugar

1.64

Total

100

Source: Willems, 2009: 281.

Maasland and inland Flanders, it was only during the first half of the eighteenth century that exotic luxuries made their appearance (Brusse, 1999: 342). Probate-inventory research reveals that wealthy farmers and rural households with commercial networks were among the first to introduce these novelties into their homes.

Consumption in numbers Cereals were used not only for bread, but also for beer, gin and other purposes, and their share (further broken down by purpose) in the overall annual expenditure on food consumption of mid-eighteenth-century Antwerp (population around 220



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50 000) is given in the comparative table below. Bread cereals accounted for just over 26 per  cent of total expenditure on food, brewing cereals for 5.5 per cent and gin cereals for 3.4 per cent. Striking in this comparative table are the shares of expenditure on butter (12.1 per cent), meat (23.8 per cent) and wine (14.4 per cent). The high shares of expenditure on cereals and meat can be explained by the massive consumption of the former and the expensiveness of the latter. The low share of expenditure on potatoes points to a rather low level of consumption. The potato was probably still restricted to the countryside and, especially in the southern Low Countries, had not yet been adopted by urban consumers. Although Table 7.2 sheds some light on the food costs of urban consumers, it is necessary to address the income side of the household economy, too. According to information available for mid-eighteenth-century Antwerp, an average household composed of two parents and three children would have spent 288 guilders on food. Given that households depending on wage labour earned between 150 and 257 guilders a year, it becomes obvious that large numbers of the urban population had to adapt their diet accordingly. The poorer sections of urban society in particular endured a monotonous diet of rye bread, potatoes, beans and peas. For the more prosperous, diet became more varied, with an increasing share of beef, vegetables and fruits.

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Bibliography Abel, W. (1980) Agricultural fluctuations in Europe: from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries, London. Bavel, B.J.P. van (1999) ‘Arable yields and total arable output in the Netherlands from the late Middle Ages to the mid-19th century’, in B.J.P. van Bavel and E. Thoen (eds), Land productivity and agro-systems in the North Sea Area. Middle ages – 20th century. Elements for comparison, Corn publications series, 2, Turnhout, pp. 85–112. Bavel, B.J.P. van (2001) ‘Land, lease and agriculture: the transition of the rural economy in the Dutch river area from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century’, Past and present, 172, pp. 3–43. Bavel, B.J.P. van (2002) ‘People and land: rural population developments and property structures in the Low Countries, c. 1300±c. 1600’, Continuity and change, 17, pp. 9–37. Bavel, B.J.P. van (2010) Manors and markets. Economy and society in the Low Countries 500–1600, Oxford. Bieleman, J. (2010) Five centuries of farming. A short history of Dutch agriculture, 1500–2000, Wageningen. Blondé, B. and Van Damme, I. (2007) ‘Een crisis als uitdaging? Kleinhandelsrevoluties en verbruiksveranderingen te Antwerpen (ca. 1678 - ca. 1748)’, Tijdschrift voor sociale en economische geschiedenis, 4, pp. 61–88. Braudel, F. (1973) Capitalism and material life, London. Brusse, P. (1999) Overleven door ondernemen. De agrarische geschiedenis van de Over-Betuwe 1650–1850, Wageningen. Cruyningen, P. J. van (2000) Behoudend maar buigzaam. Boeren in West-Zeeuws-Vlaanderen 1650–1850, Wageningen. Dejongh, G. and Thoen, E. (1999) ‘Arable productivity in Flanders and the former territory of Belgium in a long-term perspective (from the middle ages to the end of the ancien régime)’, in B. van Bavel and E. Thoen (eds), Land productivity and agro-systems in the North Sea Area. Middle ages – 20th century. Elements for comparison, Corn publications series, 2, Turnhout, pp. 30–64. Genicot, L. (1982) L’économie rurale namuroise au bas moyen âge, 1199–1429, vol. 3, Louvain-la-Neuve. Gijsbers, W. M. (1999) Kapitale ossen: de internationale handel in slachtvee in NoordwestEuropa (1300–1750), Hilversum. Jobse-Van Putten, J. (1995) Eenvoudig maar voedzaam: cultuurgeschiedenis van de dagelijkse maaltijd in Nederland, Nijmegen. Kamermans, J. A. (1999) Materiële cultuur in de Krimpenerwaard in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw. Ontwikkeling en diversiteit, Wageningen. Knibbe, M. (2006) Lokkich Fryslân: een studie naar de ontwikkeling van de productiviteit van de Friese landbouw, 1505–1830, Historia agriculturae 38, Groningen. Koolbergen, H. van (1997) ‘De materiële cultuur van Weesp en Weesperkarspel in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw’, in A. Schuurman, J. de Vries and A. van der Woude (eds), Aards geluk. De Nederlanders en hun spullen van 1550–1850, Amsterdam, pp. 121–159.

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Lambrecht, T. (2003) ‘Reciprocal exchange, credit and cash: agricultural labour markets and local economies in the southern Low Countries during the eighteenth century’, Continuity and change, 18, pp. 237–261. Noël, R. (1977) Quatre siècles de vie rurale entre la Semois et la Chiers (1050–1470), Leuven. Persson, K. G. (1999) Grain markets in Europe 1500–1900. Integration and deregulation, Cambridge. Soens, T. (2009) ‘Het dossier doel. Landschapshistorische reflecties rond het spanningsveld tussen polder en havenstad’, in H. Greefs and I. Van Damme (eds), In behouden haven. Reflecties over maritieme regio’s. Liber amicorum Greta Devos, Tielt, pp. 133–163. Stabel, P. (1999) ‘Schippers, wagenvoerders en kruiers. De organisatie van de stedelijke vervoersector in het laatmiddeleeuwse Vlaanderen’, Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis, 82, pp. 159–185. Thoen, E. and Soens, T. (2010) ‘Vegetarian or carnivores? Standards of living and diet in late medieval Flanders’, in S. Cavaciocchi (ed.), Le interazioni fra economia e ambiente biologico nell’Europa preindustriale. Secc. XIII-XVIII, Firenze, pp. 495–527. Tielhof, M. van (1995) De Hollandse graanhandel, 1470–1570: koren op de Amsterdamse molen, Den Haag. Tielhof, M. van (2002) The ‘mother of all trades’: the Baltic grain trade in Amsterdam from the late 16th to the early 19th century, Leiden. Tits-Dieuaide, M.-J. (1985) ‘The Baltic grain trade and cereal prices in Flanders at the end of the Middle Ages’, in W. Minchinton (ed.), The Baltic Grain Trade, Exeter, pp. 11–20. Unger, R. W. (1999) ‘Feeding Low Countries towns: the grain trade in the fifteenth c­ entury’, Belgisch tijdschrift voor filologie en geschiedenis, 77, pp. 329–358. Uytven, R. Van (2007) Geschiedenis van de dorst: twintig eeuwen drinken in de Lage Landen, Leuven. Verhulst, A. (1975) ‘De evolutie en de betekenis van de veeteelt in de landbouweconomie van de 13e eeuw in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden’, Album aangeboden aan Charles Verlinden ter gelegenheid van zijn dertig jarig professoraat, Ghent, pp. 467–476. Vermoesen, R. (2010) ‘Paardenboeren in Vlaanderen. Middelaars en commercialisering van de vroegmoderne rurale economie. De regio Aalst 1650–1800’, Tijdschrift voor sociale en economische geschiedenis, 7, pp. 3–37. Vries, J. de (1984) European urbanization, 1500–1800, London. Vries, J. de and Woude, A. van der (1997) The first modern economy: success, failure and perseverance of the Dutch economy, 1500–1815, Cambridge. Willems, B. (2009) Leven op de pof: krediet bij de Antwerpse middenstand in de achttiende eeuw, Studies stadsgeschiedenis 5, Amsterdam. Winter, J. M. van (2007) Spices and comfits. Collected papers on medieval food, 2007.

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Illustration 8.1  Cattle market at Pulmerend, 1896–1905, tableau of tiles after a ­painting by A.L.G. ‘Tony’ Offermans

8 The Low Countries, 1750–2000* Yves Segers, Leen Van Molle, Pim Kooij, and Jan Bieleman The polders and the clay and sandy-loam areas of the Low Countries along the North Sea have been in the vanguard of agricultural developments since the Middle Ages. During the eighteenth century, indeed, the particularly intensive system of agriculture practiced there – ‘Dutch husbandry’, a system designed to take good advantage of local and regional requirements and, for a number of products, with links to markets further afield – was indicative of quality. From the late eighteenth century on, that agricultural system was thrown severely out of kilter by the spurt in demographic growth, the process of industrialization and the transport revolution. In the second half of the nineteenth century came the beginning of a process of rising output and international market development, ushered in by sharply rising demand, shrinking transaction costs and technological innovation. Gradually, the agricultural sector in the Low Countries – now Belgium and the Netherlands – managed to orient itself towards the expanding, but at the same time competitive, agro-food market, an orientation that was ever more strongly supported and encouraged by the governments of the two countries. The establishment of the EEC, which offered new market opportunities, was a further expression of this move. In the twentieth century, both Belgian and Dutch farmers opted for specialization in products with a high added value and substantial export potential, more particularly dairy produce, pork and beef, chicken, vegetables, fruit, flowers and decorative plants. At the same time, there was a shift in the balance of power in the agro-food system, i.e. from the farmer to the agro-industry, wholesale distribution and the consumer. The number of professional farmers as a percentage of the working population has fallen by 2000 to an absolute low: 1.8 per cent in Belgium and 3.4 per cent in the Netherlands (Statistical yearbook, 2008: table 10.1). It has to be added that Dutch agribusiness has so far done better in gearing itself to the international market than Belgian, and Flemish better than Walloon.

8.1 1750–1880 Population growth: the demand side In the Low Countries, rapid population growth from the second half of the eighteenth century went hand in hand with fundamental changes in the agricultural sector and the countryside. In what later became Belgium, that growth – from 2.3 million in 1750 to 5.5 million in 1880 – began initially in rural areas, continuing shortly after in *

This chapter is based to a large extent on two books in which the latest views on the development of agriculture in the Low Countries are discussed: for the Netherlands, J. Bieleman, Boeren in Nederland (Amsterdam, 2008), see also the short English version Five centuries of farming; for Belgium, Y. Segers and L. Van Molle (eds), Leven van het land (Leuven, 2004).

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map 8 The Low Countries, 1750–2000 Rivers Present State Boundaries Belgian Linguistic Frontier

0

30

60 km

GR O NIN G EN

Harlingen

Groningen

FRIES LAND

Paterswolde

Bolsward

N O R T H

Enkhuizen

Broek op Langedijk

S E A

IJSSELMEER

DR E N TH E

NO RT H H OLL AN D l se IJ s

Amsterdam HA AR LE MME R MEE R ZUI DPLA SHE T WES TLA ND POLDER Gouda Zoetermeer

SOUTH HOLLA ND Schiedam

ZEE LAND

Roeselare

NO RT H BR AB AN T Breda

Me u se

Rh in e

Boxtel

Antwerp

Bruges

Diksmuide

DE B ETUWE

Aardenburg

POLDERS

WEST FLA N DE R S

GELDE RLAND

Wageningen

Rotterdam

Vlissingen

Zeebrugge

OVE RIJSS EL

TWE NT E T H E Lonneker N E T H E R L A N D S

WA AS LAND

Ghent

EAST F FLA N DE R S l he Sc

dt

CA MPINE

l a n d e r s

Ninove Enghien

Mechelen

LIMBOURG

Rillaar

BRABANT Brussels Leuven Hoeilaart

B E L G I U M

G E R M A N Y

Hasselt Maastricht HE S B AY E

Gembloux

H A I N A U LT

Charleroi

eu se Wépion M Z re b O m a S R N D C O

LIÈGE

W a l l o n i a

F R A N C E

226

LUXEMBOURG



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the numerous small and medium-sized towns, especially in the regions of industrial expansion (the provinces of Liège and Hainault, and Ghent). While the agricultural population thus grew in number between 1750 and 1880, its share in the total working population fell dramatically, from approximately 65 per cent in 1750 to 36 per cent in 1880. In 1880, 21.3 per cent of the Belgian population was living in municipalities of more than 20 000 inhabitants. Population grew rapidly in the Netherlands too, doubling between 1795 and 1880 from 2.07 million to 4.0 million. However, the corollary of this was not rapid urbanization, as the proportion of the Dutch population living in towns of over 20 000 inhabitants actually fell, i.e. from 24.5 per cent in 1801 to 21.7 per cent in 1851 (Kooij, 1985: 95). It was not until the Great Agrarian Depression of 1875–1895 that, in the Netherlands, people started to leave the countryside. In Belgium, the expansion of towns was accompanied by an early process of industrialization, resulting in increasing numbers of people becoming dependent on the retail trade for their food supply. The long and the short of it was that the demand for food increased tremendously right across the two countries of this region, and farmers had to respond: Belgian agriculture did so by focusing primarily on the national market, whereas Dutch agriculture continued to produce for export markets. Industrialization got under way much later in the Netherlands, one factor in this being that, between 1815 and 1830, when the northern and the southern Low Countries together formed the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, the political choice was for industrial activity to be developed in the south of that realm.

Agricultural production: the supply side From the second half of the seventeenth century to the late eighteenth, the agriculture and horticulture of the southern and northern Low Countries were technically superior to the agriculture and horticulture practised in other European countries; indeed, it also proved possible to export a proportion of the grain harvest. Foreign travellers and agronomists were full of praise, writing about the intensive ‘Dutch husbandry’ being practiced, which was based on an ingenious mix of arable farming and animal husbandry, a maximum use of labour resulting in high yields per unit of area being achieved. Yields rose significantly during the century from 1750 to 1850, certainly for cereal crops, thanks to the introduction and dissemination of improved production techniques, such as better crop-rotation, careful weeding and the intensive use of manure. In terms of the output/labour ratio, however, Flemish agriculture scored rather poorly. Labour productivity was somewhat better in the northern provinces, especially in the arable-farming clay districts (van Bavel, 1999). Population growth would have been unthinkable without the introduction of the potato in the seventeenth century. In comparison with cereals, the potato provides much greater nutritional value per unit of area cultivated and is also quite simple to grow on small plots. Improvements in arable farming – still the basis of the agricultural economy – also gave rise to better performance in animal husbandry; in this respect, potatoes were also used as feed for animals, especially pigs. One well-known way to produce more food was to expand the area under cultivation by land reclamation 227

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and by permanent cultivation through cutting back on fallow land, which was in accordance with the physiocratic principles in vogue during the eighteenth century. From the late eighteenth century onwards, common land and waste land, often with lower fertility and in peripheral locations, became more rapidly integrated into the traditional production system. In Belgium, between c. 1850 and 1880, around 90 000 hectares of uncultivated land were reclaimed (half of them afforested) and more than 250 000 hectares of arable and grassland drained. In the Netherlands, with the help of steam power, land reclamation through the transformation of stretches of water into polders was initiated, resulting in the Zuidplaspolder near Rotterdam/Gouda (1836–1839), and the Haarlemmermeer near Amsterdam/Haarlem (1836–1858). At the end of the century, in the east of the country, most common land was individualized and cultivated. Despite progress in terms of area of production and yields, tension between the supply of and the demand for food increased from the late eighteenth century onwards. Successive authorities (Austrian, French, Dutch and Belgian) and governments pursued policies aimed at avoiding food shortages and high price levels. They began regularly to gather statistical information about harvests and food stocks, permitting them to intervene in respect of imports and exports, and guarantee an acceptable price level. However, these attempts to control the food market met with varying degrees of success. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Napoleonic ‘continental system’ – a set of export prohibitions intended to disrupt the supply of food and other goods to Great Britain – worked to the benefit of internal consumption. After the fall of Napoleon, the government of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands significantly liberalized the import and export of grain, in the hope of restoring the favourable transit position that the north of the Kingdom had enjoyed in international grain trading (van Zanden and van Riel, 2000: 115, 154; Van Dijck, 2008: 286). However, periods of lower prices gave rise to criticism of this policy among farmers in both the north and the south. In 1834, shortly after Belgium became independent, her parliament opted for a sliding scale of import duties on cereals, the intention being to create a better balance between the interests of producers and consumers: the lower the domestic price, the higher the taxes on imports; the higher the domestic price, the lower the taxes on imports. France and Great Britain were the examples for this policy. A similar system was introduced in the Netherlands a year later, giving rise to protests from the  big farmers in the clay provinces in the north (Groningen) and the south (Zeeland), who were the main producers of grain: they wanted precisely the opposite – protection when import prices were low. The period from 1840 to 1850 was marked by the last subsistence crisis in Western Europe (with the exception of the two World Wars). Successive failed harvests of potatoes and cereals demonstrated the precarious nature of the food supply during those years and the shortage of basic foodstuffs led to new price increases. The Belgian government responded in September 1845 by introducing free trade in respect of imports of cereals and other food products, by banning exports and by buying food abroad (Van Dijck, 2008: 323). From the 1850s on, the structural deficit in domestic grain production made minds receptive in both Belgium and the Netherlands to the 228



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idea of free trade in an open market. By the 1870s, the liberalization of the agricultural market was complete in both countries.

Between subsistence production and the market Rising demand from the second half of the eighteenth century on resulted in sharp increases in food prices. Profiting most from this development were the large, marketoriented farms, such as those in the clay areas of Groningen and Zeeland, although almost every farm in the Netherlands was market-oriented: even small farmers in the east of the country had a keen eye for the opportunities the market could throw up. Farmers tried to create a surplus that could be taken to market: sometimes a pig, in other cases a barrel of butter, vegetables or whatever came to hand. The money that could be earned from this was an important incentive. In most instances, the products were sold at the local market, but this did not imply that they were consumed locally; traders often transported them to other regions and countries. This market orientation could have induced the early introduction of innovations. In the northern Low Countries, the winnowing mill was already in use in the first half of the seventeenth century; in the southern, the Brabant (swing) plough reached its perfection in the early eighteenth century (Lindemans, 1952, I: 174–187, II, 89–90; Bieleman, 2008: 167–168). In what was later Belgium, characterized as this was by unbalanced growth between the rural areas of Flanders and the industrial regions in the Walloon provinces, domestic production had greater difficulty in satisfying demand, with rising prices and food riots as a consequence. Reliable data about market surpluses are not available, but it is clear that trading in food products was primarily local and regional, with a large proportion of agricultural production being traded outside the official town markets in a predominantly rural sale-and-barter system (Vanhaute, 1992: 226–230). In terms of both distance and number of intermediaries, the food chain was short. We know, for instance, that in about 1800 the supply hinterlands of Brussels and Ghent extended no further than thirty kilometres beyond those cities for wheat and twenty kilometres for rye. Around 1850, urban markets in East and West Flanders were selling no more than 30 per cent of total provincial wheat production, the corresponding figures for buckwheat and rye being about 18 per cent and 10 respectively (Segers, 2003: 113–114). It was mainly in periods of scarcity and failed harvests or bumper crops that trading with more distant regions took place. The large farms profiting from rising prices were to be found mostly in the fertile polders of West Flanders, in the west of Brabant, in the Haspengouw region, in the loamy soils of Hainault, in the area between the Rivers Sambre and Meuse, and in the Condroz region. They focused on growing cereals and on extensive animal husbandry. In densely populated Belgium, there were nevertheless countless small farmers producing food primarily for their own subsistence; where possible, they still made use of ‘common land’. Mixed farming (a combination of arable farming and animal husbandry) prevailed and outside input was limited: farmers provided their own manure, silage, seed and plant material, and the simple tools they used were produced mainly by local blacksmiths and carpenters. During the first half of the nineteenth century, the Brabant plough, the winnowing mill and the 229

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churn were introduced more widely and, from the time of the food crisis of the 1840s on, Belgian farmers started to use salt, lime and slag and imported South-American guano as fertilizers. The differences between the farming systems in the two countries under review are also reflected in the function of proto-industrialization. Even smaller farmers in Belgium had to market enough produce to raise cash to pay for rising costs and charges, such as ground rent and taxes. The increasing need for additional financial means fuelled the trend towards proto-industrial cottage industry, which in turn strengthened the commercialization of the rural economy. In some regions, especially the south of West Flanders, the combination of flax growing and traditional linen production became the basis of the income strategy; in others, supplementary income came from clog making, lace production, basket weaving, nail making, etc. Protoindustry was not that common in the northern part of the Low Countries, but the spinning of wool, had developed in the Twente region, initially for the same reasons as in Flanders. During this period, however, farmers switched to flax, which was not grown in the region, but provided by entrepreneurs, the stimulus for farming families to employ their know-how in this new direction being the demand and high prices for linen on the international market. The stronger market-orientation of Dutch agriculture was already noticeable during the eighteenth century, under the Dutch Republic. In the second half of that century, Frisian butter was being exported to London via the port of Harlingen and meat, too, was already being traded over long distances. During the nineteenth century, Dutch traders further developed their exports of bulbs and butter, and sold hams from Brabant and Gelderland to Holland and dried fruit and sausages from Limbourg to the west of the country. With her fast-growing import market for food, Great Britain especially became important. Concentrating on industrial growth, the British were coming to rely more and more on other countries for the provision of agricultural products. Around 1830, approximately 75 per cent of the imported butter on the London market was coming from the Netherlands, especially Friesland. That market offered a new opportunity, too, for the small farms in the five sandy provinces in the east of the Netherlands, where pig breeding became a specialization. The number of pigs kept in these provinces grew from c. 132 000 in 1851 (a low figure, due to the shortage of potatoes in previous years) to 532 000 in 1904, and pigs were exported to Germany, Belgium and Great Britain: in the mid-1880s, the percentages of pigs being exported to these countries were c. 66 per cent, 21 and 14 per cent respectively (Bieleman, 2008: 406). Belgian agriculture, too, discovered new opportunities on wealthy urban markets. From the early nineteenth century on, there was a growing interest in commercial flower- and ornamental-plant-growing (including azalea, camellia and laurel), fruit production (apples, pears), and, around larger cities, in commercial vegetable-growing for the bourgeoisie. A few specialized horticultural enterprises around Ghent and Brussels started to work for an international clientele and market-oriented vegetablegrowing is reputed to have been referred to by King Leopold II as the ‘bijouterie de l’agriculture belge’ (the jewel of Belgian agriculture). Dutch horticultural products were likewise much in demand on the international market, particularly those from 230



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Illustration 8.2  Beurré Chaboceau, colloquialy known as Jefkespeer, lithography by P. De ­Pannemaeker as depicted in the Bulletin d’arboriculture, de culture potagère et de floriculture, 1 April 1878, Ghent

the western provinces of North and South Holland, though also from Breda, which around 1850 was already exporting vegetables (including cabbages) in large quantities to British towns via the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam.

The traditional food industries During the nineteenth century, the conversion of a number of agricultural products into foodstuffs took place mostly on the farm. Those foodstuffs were for consumption by the farming family or for the market – the farmer fed himself and the nation. Fruit was processed into jam and syrup, and vegetables were dried or preserved with sugar, salt or vinegar. On the farm, most attention was doubtlessly devoted to processing milk. In the Netherlands, farmers’ wives produced cheese on a large scale, and the significant quantities of Dutch butter produced were largely marketed, both within the country and abroad. Much sought after in London, moreover, was butter from Diksmuide and the surrounding area of West Flanders. Beyond the farm, in villages and urban centres, processing was still small-scale and traditional. Mills, small slaughterhouses, local breweries, jenever (a sort of gin) distilleries, sugar refineries and syrup factories shaped the food industry. These businesses 231

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had little or no machinery and employed few personnel. Their area of operations was usually relatively small, though products such as flour and conserves that could easily be kept for a longer period were traded over longer distances. A few traditional products such as jenever reached a remarkably wide market. Dutch jenever from towns such as Schiedam became world-famous and jenever from the small Belgian town of Hasselt was exported to France, Italy, England, Germany and even Cuba. In many places, the jenever production was combined with the fattening of hundreds of oxen on the residue of the cereal used in distillation (Van Schoonberghe, 1996). In the north of the Netherlands, in the province of Groningen, potatoes became the raw material for the first branch of modern food-processing industry there, i.e. the production of potato flour, which got under way around 1840; within three decades, output had already reached 6 million kg per year, rising to about 60 million kg by 1900 (Pilat, 1989: 100). Potatoes were also the basis for such other derivates as dextrin, from which a range of products (glues, for instance) were made from the 1880s on and sold all over Europe via agents. The most important producer of potato flour was Willem Albert Scholten, who owned 24 factories, including some in Germany, Poland and Russia. In fact, he headed the first Dutch multinational, which in that pre-railway age faced specific communication problems (Knaap, 2004). His empire also included a sugar factory, whose raw material was sugar beet. Beet sugar production in the Netherlands began around 1850 and was centred in the clay area of the western part of Brabant and in the South Holland islands. During the second half of the century, the De Betuwe region specialized in the industrial production of apple syrup and jam, with a strong orientation towards the German market. In Belgium, sugar beet cultivation and the sugar industry were spread over various fertile regions (mainly West Flanders, Waasland and Haspengouw).

Distribution Between 1750 and 1880, two major developments naturally reinforcing each other had a direct effect on agriculture, namely the transport revolution – symbolized by paved roads, canals, docks, trains and steamships – and the introduction of free trade. From the second half of the eighteenth century, transport infrastructure improved in both the southern and northern Low Countries, partly at the instigation of Austrian, French, Dutch and Belgian authorities. In 1835, a start was made with the construction of an extensive railway network, first in Belgium and subsequently in the Netherlands. Transport over both short and longer distances became easier, more efficient and above all cheaper; now, butter came by rail to the Frisian harbour of Harlingen and cattle were transported by rail from the markets to the slaughterhouses. The combination of different means of transport created links between local production centres and markets that had previously been isolated. Comparative price research indicates increasing price convergence in more integrated regional markets, though price differences between regions and between urban and rural markets persisted (Vanhaute, 1992: 230–239). The available transport infrastructure also created new links in the food chain. In such villages as Wijhe, Olst and Twello in the eastern Dutch provinces 232



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of Overijssel and Gelderland, for instance, meat-packing factories were founded and these sent fresh meat by railway to the ports. Farmers could sell their produce for cash in several different ways. One simple method was to sell surpluses to itinerant intermediaries (brokers) or wholesalers in, for example, cereals, flax or cattle for slaughter. In the fruit sector, traders bought all or part of the crop, even before the harvest. This way of working saved the producer the time and effort involved in transportation to the market, but often meant a reduced payment. Some farmers and above all farmers’ wives therefore preferred to continue to sell their products themselves at weekly village and town markets. Goods were transported on foot, by wheelbarrow or (dog)cart, by inland waterway or later by tram or train. Farmers and farmers’ wives visited the markets to sell to wholesalers or directly to consumers, or sold from door-to-door, like the milk girls before the milkmen from the dairy industry supplanted them. From the mid-eighteenth century on, there was an increase in the number of markets and market days; by about 1800, the average distance between markets in the province of West Flanders, for instance, was only 10 km. The second half of the nineteenth century saw the new means of transport leading to a process of specialization and decentralization, with city authorities reserving specific market squares and market days for specific product types, such as vegetables and fruit, dairy produce or poultry; some cities built covered markets, though these remained rare in the Netherlands. At the same time, the number of food shops increased, not only in the cities, but even in the countryside, shops that sold dried food, vegetables, fruit and drink, and that were in addition to bakers, butchers, dairy shops, etc. (Dejongh, 2001: 39–40; Segers, 2003: 397–404). This process indicates not only the growing distance between the farmer as a producer and the consumer, but also the improving standard of living. The rising purchasing power of consumers, as well as their preference for new products, created new opportunities for shopkeepers and fuelled the expansion of the retail system. It was not only the modernization of the means of transport that gave rise to increasing trading activity between cities and villages. Under the influence of free trade rhetoric, two important barriers to trade were eliminated during the 1860s, namely price-fixing for basic food products (particularly bread) by some city administrations and city consumer taxes. The abolition of these taxes in the Netherlands (1856) and Belgium (1859–1860) liberalized transactions between cities and their hinterland. As a result of the reduced transaction costs, retail prices fell and the range of groceries (and other consumer goods) in urban markets and in shops became more extensive.

A meagre diet for the people Almost all historians agree that the standard of living of the great majority of Belgium’s population fell during the first half of the nineteenth century. Indicators of this are the increasing expenditure on food and the declining quantity and reduced variety of the food consumed. In the 1850s, industrial workers in Ghent were spending more than 75 per cent of their family budget on food. During the nineteenth century, daily food was predominantly vegetal, i.e. potatoes and bread – this last for a long time baked at 233

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home and varying regionally according to the cereal used (spelt, maslin, buckwheat, etc.) – supplemented with small quantities of vegetables and fruit. A classic daily dish in rural areas was porridge. What people ate was largely determined by what was in season, what they produced themselves (certainly in rural areas) and what could be saved and conserved. Conserving techniques consisted of pickling, smoking, drying or preserving with vinegar or sugar. Those who could afford it ate animal products (fat and bacon, beef and pork, for example), and dairy products (butter, cheese, etc.), but generally in small quantities. Popular drinks were buttermilk and increasingly milk, coffee, beer and jenever (Segers, 2003: 255–285). This diet did not fundamentally differ from that in the Netherlands, although fish (herring and also salmon) had a prominent place on the Dutch table. The standard of living was much lower in the towns in the west of the country than in the east (van Zanden and van Riel, 2000: 85) and after 1855 showed an upward swing that corresponded to the growing consumption of meat (van Zanden and van Riel, 2000: 309). In the budgets of labourers between 1852 and 1882, the share of bread and potatoes fell from 32 to 20 per cent, whereas the consumption of sugar, coffee and tea increased (up 2.2 per cent), as did that of meat and fish (up 2.8 per cent) and especially dairy products (up 5.3 per cent); the towns in the west of the country lagged behind in this respect, too. There were considerable regional and above all social differences in eating patterns. In the countryside, the range of food was richer (in terms of caloric value), but more monotonous than that in the cities. Additionally, food consumption was above all a means of class differentiation. Wealthy people ate more, better and more varied food than the average farmer or industrial or agricultural worker. The rich upper class could afford luxury meats (beef, veal, lamb, game and poultry), expensive vegetables (tomatoes, artichokes, chicory or ‘Belgian endive’, and new potatoes), exquisite domestically grown and imported fruit (table grapes, strawberries and pineapple), cheeses and wines, delights that were prepared by servants or their own cook. Furthermore, they were also able to enjoy these delights outside their homes as well, and eating in restaurants and brasseries became more popular as the nineteenth century progressed. Brussels, proud to call itself ‘little Paris’, had seven restaurants in 1819, but by 1880 boasted 129 ( Jacobs and Scholliers, 2002: 82). In the Netherlands, the habit of eating in a restaurant was confined to family feasts, and eating places were to be found mainly in hotels.

8.2 1880–1950 Agriculture in a globalizing world From the 1860s on, Western European agriculture came under increasing pressure from international competition. Cheap, high-quality wheat – transported by steamship from the United States, Russia and India – flooded the West European market: indeed, average yearly US exports of wheat rose from 59 million bushels (1 bushel = 35 238 litres) in 1870–1874 to 184 million bushels in 1895–1899. The consequence of 234



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this for Belgium was an increase in grain imports from 89 000 tonnes in 1865 to 1.5 million tonnes in 1914. Antwerp and Rotterdam were very important European ports that supplied a hinterland stretching deep into Germany. Cereal prices fell sharply, resulting in improvements in both the quality and the quantity of the food consumed: a loaf of wheat bread costing 0.50 francs in Belgium in 1880 cost only 0.25 francs after 1893. Bread was not the only staple affected: massive imports of rice, sugar, coffee, frozen meat, etc. led to falls in the prices of these staples, too. All this was of course a favourable development for consumers, but farmers had to find a response in order to maintain their level of income. The process of this ‘agricultural invasion’, as it has become known, heralded a new phase in the globalization of agriculture, since the strong export performance of countries overseas, particularly the United States, not only disrupted the domestic market in Belgium and the Netherlands, but also affected these countries’ markets abroad, leading; for example, to exports of Dutch potatoes to Great Britain to decline from 36 million kg to barely 1.8 million kg between 1877 and 1884.

Agricultural production The governments of Belgium and the Netherlands had no wish to curb free trade. Both countries were small and dependent on exports of respectively industrial and agricultural products, and they made the same policy decision, i.e. little or no protection. The free import of bread cereals was permitted, in order to keep basic food cheap and to avoid putting pressure on wages – all the more important for Belgium at a time when industry was going through a crisis, too. In Belgium, during the 1880–1890 period, in a move by the government to encourage structural reorientation and protect the infant food industry, a limited import duty was introduced for livestock and meat, flour and pasta, canned food, dairy products and confectionery. As a result, the structure of output changed visibly: animal husbandry (employing imported cattle feed, too) overtook arable farming in terms of economic importance and horticulture came to the fore. In the Netherlands, where industrialization had only just recently got under way and the importance of agrarian exports was already much higher, a strict policy of schooling, information dissemination and measures to improve product quality was introduced, with the aim of improving the country’s export position for more luxury products, such as butter, cheese and vegetables. Nevertheless, mixed farming continued to prevail in both countries until the 1950s, based on a combination of arable farming, animal husbandry and in some cases commercial horticulture. The expansion of the agricultural and horticultural sectors followed the sharp increase in the purchasing power of large parts of the population, which took place from the mid-1890s on in both Belgium and the Netherlands, a time that saw employment growing in both the industrial and the service sectors, and wages increasing in real terms. Moreover, the price of bread remained low, which promoted the consumption of luxury goods; in industrial centres, the consumption of potatoes and bread cereals fell, while that of meat and dairy products, fruit and vegetables rose. It is noticeable 235

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Table 8.1 Structure of agricultural production in Belgium and the Netherlands, 1880–1950 arable farming

animal husbandry

horticulture

Belgium Netherlands Belgium Netherlands Belgium Netherlands 1880

47

35

45

49

 8

16

1895

32

28

60

57

 8

15

1925

28

24

58

61

14

15

1950

18

24

66

64

16

12

Sources: Segers and Van Molle, 2004: 51; Knibbe, 1993: 287.

that both production volume and productivity grew at an accelerated rate in both countries, particularly from the 1920s and 1930s on. Multiple factors account for this successful process of output growth. First of all, there was increasing specialization, regions beginning to produce more in accordance with their specific soil characteristics and the new opportunities that nearby or distant markets offered. In this respect, a lucrative cultivation under glass of table grapes developed on the southern slopes of the IJse valley between Brussels and Leuven. Secondly, there was more fertilizer available, thanks to the greater numbers of livestock and the production of artificial fertilizers. Around 1900, Belgium and the Netherlands were the largest consumers of chemical fertilizers in the world and boasted some of the highest yields for sugar beet, rye, barley and potatoes. Both countries also acquired an international reputation as producers of artificial fertilizers, which were by-products of the coke production of coalmines and steel factories. Thirdly, we must point to the increased impact of technology and science in the production process. Labour-saving machinery and scientific insights into soil fertility, seed improvement, cross-breeding and rational animal-feeding resulted in enhanced productivity. Thanks to high food prices during the First World War and profits on the black market, large numbers of farmers were able to invest in modernization and mechanization during the 1920s. It is worth mentioning, too, that, from the late 1890s on, several Belgian entrepreneurs became important players in the agricultural machinery market, examples being the successful firms of Jules Mélotte and Persoons for hand-driven cream separators.

The balance between importing and exporting Belgian and Dutch agriculture and horticulture largely succeeded in meeting the expanding domestic demand for more expensive food products. They also produced increasing quantities for export. From 1880 to 1950, Belgium produced an average of 75 per cent of all agricultural products purchased and consumed within the country 236



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Illustration 8.3  Export of butter and pork on the ship Heron on its weekly crossing from the port of Harlingen to London, c. 1925, photograph

(Blomme, 1992: 276–287) – a good result, taking into account a still rapidly growing population, i.e. from 5.5 million inhabitants in 1880 to 8.5 million in 1950. For sugar, meat and butter, Belgian production matched domestic demand; for eggs and potatoes, there was often a surplus. Horticultural products came mainly from within the country and there were partial exports of high-quality vegetables. Belgium also managed to breed and export very large numbers of its strong, monumental and expensive Brabant draught horses to the United States and other interested countries, with numbers rising to 35 000 per year in 1910 and again in 1926. Large-scale imports of wheat, however, naturally gave rise to an overwhelmingly negative trade balance in bread cereals. In 1880, roughly 60 per cent of Belgian bread grain consumption was covered by domestic arable farming; by around 1930, the proportion had fallen to less than a quarter. The Netherlands, with her population growing from 4 million in 1879 to 10 million in 1950, maintained the tradition of producing for the foreign market. In 1900, approximately 41 per cent of agricultural production (unprocessed products) was exported; in 1913, that share was even running at 51 per cent (Pilat, 1989: 3). After the First World War, it dipped slightly, due partly to increasing competition from Denmark, Normandy and Schleswig-Holstein, as well as to a change in the international situation. However, the importance of horticultural products rose, their share in total exports moving up from 2 to 17 per cent between 1846 and 1926 (Pilat, 1989: 18). In the mid-1890s – officially because of animal disease, but in fact for protectionist 237

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reasons – Germany and Great Britain halted the import of live pigs, though the British continued to allow fresh meat in. As a result, small farmers in the sandy areas of the Netherlands began to specialize in the production of so-called ‘London piglets’ with a weight of about 50 kg. These were exported via meat-packing factories and became popular in Britain. By 1903, Dutch exports of fresh pork reached the record figure of nearly 27 000 tonnes, with the harbour of Vlissingen in the south-west becoming an important hub in the Dutch meat trade (Bieleman 2008: 406–407). The number of pigs rose significantly in Belgium, too, though most pigs slaughtered there remained within the rural families that raised them for their own consumption (Segers and Van Molle 2004: 64). Both Belgium and the Netherlands became increasingly dependent on imports of feed and concentrates: indeed, the Netherlands became one of the most important importers of maize, the others being Germany and Great Britain. This dependence formed a real problem during World War I when, in Belgium and to a large extent also in the Netherlands (which remained neutral), the supply of feed decreased or even stopped. Domestic cereals could not be used as an alternative, because they were needed for human nutrition. In consequence, a substantial part of the cattle stock had to be slaughtered. However, demand from Germany meant that Dutch agriculture was able increase its exports of horticultural products during the first years of the war. In occupied Belgium, the Germans controlled both the production and the distribution of foodstuffs, besides setting prices, which encouraged the black market and smuggling. A large proportion of arable farm production and farm stock (draught horses and cattle) was requisitioned and taken in part to Germany, and imports of food (wheat, bacon, etc.) from the United States – totaling roughly 5 million tones and organized through the Commission for Relief in Belgium, an initiative of the American industrialist Herbert Hoover – proved insufficient. Whereas farmers were both hit by and able to profit from the war, large swathes of the Belgian population suffered hunger during the German occupation, especially in 1917 and 1918 when imports of food dropped (Henry, 1924). After World War I, increased production capacity in large parts of the world put even more pressure on European agriculture than previously. Bread grains from the USA and Canada, and butter from Australia and New Zealand, as well as meat from South and North America, transported in refrigerated ships, depressed prices. The share of agriculture in overall Dutch exports fell from a record level of 51 per cent in 1913 to 40 per cent in 1926 (Pilat, 1989: 3). From the late 1920s on, the combination of falling international prices for agricultural products and a deep crisis in industry and the financial sector had a disastrous effect on the purchasing power of the Dutch and Belgian populations, and therefore on demand. The governments of both countries took measures to protect and support the agricultural sector: besides import restrictions covering meat, vegetables and dairy products, there were also measures to stimulate exports. Moreover, Belgium opted for protection in respect of sugar beet and the sugar industry, as well as cereals and potatoes. For her part, the Netherlands in 1931–1932 set production limits for domestic wheat, dairy produce and pork, and provided price support for these products. Perversely, the 238



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measures taken by each country served to impair the agricultural economy of the other. In 1934, the Dutch measures were brought together within the framework of the Agricultural Crisis Act, which gave the government powers to intervene in production, processing and sales, a policy developed at a later time and on a larger scale by the EEC.

Modernization in the food industry For a substantial part of the nineteenth century, the food industry consisted predominantly of small-scale, traditional family businesses in a few traditional sectors: breweries, distilleries, maltings, flour mills and sugar refineries. Population growth, urbanization and increasing purchasing power led to a sharp rise in the demand for food products, including more expensive products, such as butter and cheese, meat products, pasta, pastry, chocolate and confectionery. The increased demand could be met only through increases in scale, mechanization and technological innovation, particularly in the area of canning. As a result, the sector underwent a fundamental transformation. Margarine and dairy factories, meat product factories, canning factories and the like sprang up. There was also a process of concentration. Investing in modern technology was unaffordable for many family businesses, although this was the only way to cope with fierce domestic and foreign competition, and between 1880 and 1947 in Belgium, for example, the number of sugar refineries fell in consequence from forty to eight in 1947, the number of mills from about 4 000 to 3 000 and the number of breweries from over 2 500 to 716. Canning factories, however, increased in number. Around 1850, the Netherlands had about ten of them, supplying products mainly to the colonies, but by the end of the century home-market appreciation of those products was on the rise (Dutch housewives, it was said, preferred canned food to fresh). In 1896, Belgium had sixteen canning factories; by 1937, that number had climbed to 141 (Baudet, 1986: 102–108; Van Molle, 1986: 168–172). The growing success of canned vegetables, fruit and soups served the interests of commercial horticulture. Canning factories entered into contracts with vegetable growers, and in some cases this included the delivery of young plants and the provision of technical advice. This gave market gardeners a guaranteed sales outlet and factories a guaranteed supply, but it also made market gardeners dependent on decisions out of their hands. The industrial production of food was based on scientific research, particularly in mechanics and chemistry. However, the launch of the first industrially manufactured compound food products, such as margarine, gave rise to growing concerns among both consumers and the government about quality. Such concerns were not new, as food adulteration had a long history: milk was diluted with water, butter mixed with cheap margarine and animal feed with sand or sawdust, etc. The development of applied chemistry and the foundation of laboratories for the analysis of food, feed and fertilizers enabled fraud to be combated more efficiently. To that end, the four existing private laboratories in Belgium were taken over in 1884 by the State and supplemented with new ones, several of them linked to the Institut Agricole de l’Etat à 239

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000

Gembloux (State Agricultural Institute at Gembloux). In the Netherlands, quality control was conducted by five research stations, the first founded at Wageningen in 1892. The Wageningen Agricultural University, which started as the agricultural polytechnic Rijks Hoogere Land-, Tuin- en Boschbouwschool in 1876 and changed names many times, the longest-lasting name being Landbouwhogeschool, was closely linked to these stations and became the major centre of research in agriculture. Important, too, was the dairy school established at Bolsward in 1904. Larger co-operatives had their own laboratories, and larger towns had inspectors to control both hygiene and the quality of meat, dairy and other products. At the end of the nineteenth century, Belgium and the Netherlands began to introduce stricter legislation regulating the production, trade and sale of food products, and applying to both people and cattle, the aim being to protect health and to underpin domestic and international marketing. Even the definition of products (margarine, for instance) and the use of colouring in foodstuffs was subject to regulation. Hygiene became an important issue in the food chain: for reasons of hygiene, for example, some towns set up new slaughterhouses, and health inspectors were given the right to visit production and sales locations. Butter fraud caused special concern, and a particular worry was the sometimes poor quality of butter that came directly from the farm or from small, artisanal factories. In 1889, the Netherlands introduced a Boterwet (Butter Act) to combat fraud and in 1904 also introduced a quality control stamp for butter, which was recognized abroad and greatly boosted Dutch butter exports. Belgium, too, introduced strict regulations on butter (1890), but lagged behind in terms of the marketing of quality: control stamps for butter, eggs and certain cheese varieties (Herve, for instance) were introduced only in the 1930s. Meanwhile, the food industry itself became more and more aware of the positive effects of branding, attractive packaging and publicity to force up its sales figures, a case in point being the brandname recognition achieved by producers of canned food (such as Marie Thumas and Noack), pasta (Soubry, Honig), jam (De Betuwe), sauces (Devos Lemmens, Calvé), biscuits (Verkade, De Beukelaer, Parein), margarine (Solo, Blue Band), and even milk (Stassano, Stabilac, Sterovita).

Distribution and consumption Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the railway system in both countries was supplemented by an intricate structure of tramways that connected even the smallest villages. Belgium around 1910 was not only the most industrialized country on the European continent, she also had Europe’s highest population density (252 inhabitants per km²) and densest rail- and tramway network (15.9 km of railway plus 12.4 km of tramway per 100 km²). The expansion of the transport infrastructure had a particularly significant influence on distribution, with train and tram connections making large specialist market centres easily accessible: an instance of this was the Brussels earlymorning market, where expensive products such as fine vegetables, small fruit, dairy products and poultry were offered for sale to the rich urban elite and for export to Paris, London, Cologne, Berlin and other major cities. Villages along the new tramways 240



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Illustration 8.4  Back cover of the undated recipe folder Les recettes de Marie ­Thumas for the promotion of a canned food factory with the same name, ­established in Leuven in 1886, image after Draeger, Paris

from Ninove and Enghien to Brussels (both constructed in 1886) became centres of strawberry cultivation for the capital. During the picking season the ‘strawberry tram’ left Ninove at midnight, stopped at each village on the way to Brussels to pick up men and women with impressive strawberry baskets, and returned with the empty baskets around six or eight o’clock in the morning. 241

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000

The example above illustrates that the transport revolution not only offered new opportunities for export, but also slowly created integrated national markets in which producers, processors and consumers, while not sharing the same location, were yet able to benefit from each other. The industrial dairy factory Nutricia, founded in 1896, daily collected fresh milk from a wide circle around its premises (Zoetermeer in the Netherlands and, from 1904 on, also Brussels). Dutch beet-sugar factories sometimes collected beet from other parts of the country and farmers sometimes contracted with wholesalers or processing companies to sell their production in advance. Both farmers and wholesalers also engaged in price speculation: prices could be low during the harvest season, so it could be worthwhile to defer selling or distribution (of hard fruits, for instance) for a time. The national market at the end of the nineteenth century was nevertheless far from perfect. Prompted by this and more particularly by a need for a larger market, by fluctuating market prices and by dissatisfaction with the role of intermediaries, farmers and market gardeners took the initiative to organize their selling collectively, often within the framework of newly founded farmers’ unions. The establishment of agricultural co-operative societies proved to be an important response both to the crisis of the late nineteenth century and to the later challenges of the Great Depression of the 1930s. The trend towards working co-operatively also extended to other aspects that affected farms financially, from the purchase of input to loans and to food-processing and food sales. Belgium and the Netherlands followed a virtually parallel development in this respect. The first co-operative society in Belgium for the purchase of fertilizers was set up in 1866 (Roeselare), the first in the Netherlands in 1877 (Aardenburg). The first co-operative dairy factory in the Netherlands was founded in 1886 (Warga, Friesland), the first in Belgium in 1888 (Oostkamp, East Flanders). By 1907, Belgium had 544 co-operative dairies (Segers and Van Molle, 2004: 69), most of which were small, hand-worked butter factories, though there were also some bigger steam-driven factories, but not as many as in the Netherlands and Denmark. The formation of saving-and-loan co-operatives on the lines of the Raiffeisen model began in Belgium in 1892 at Rillaar and in the Netherlands in 1896 at Lonneker. Co-operative selling was a response to the imperfections of the capitalist market economy. It offered a number of benefits, first among which was that it extended the market to the regional, national and even the international level. Secondly, it gave participating producers more control over pricing. Thirdly, it reduced transaction costs, with forwarding agents taking responsibility for sorting, packaging and transportation. The first vegetable auction hall was founded in the Netherlands in 1887 at Broek op Langedijk and was followed in 1895 by the establishment of a co-operative butter auction at Maastricht and at the beginning of the twentieth century by co-operative fruit and flower auctions. An important innovation in this respect was the auction clock, first used in the small Dutch town of Enkhuizen in 1902, whereby a wholesale price was called out in descending order and the first trader calling ‘mine’ would be the purchaser of the lot on offer. This system served to pit wholesalers one against the other and resulted in farmers and market gardeners receiving the best prices. In Belgium, co-operative selling emerged with more difficulty, certainly in the fruit and 242



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vegetable sector. Greenhouse growers of luxury table grapes from the south side of Brussels set up a co-operative in 1900 and had their own auction hall in the capital. The first butter auction was established at Hasselt in 1897 and was followed by similar auctions at Bruges, Brussels and in the Campine region. The Belgian Boerenbond (Farmers’ League) organized co-operative selling for potatoes, butter, eggs, vegetables and fruit, and this became rather successful during the interwar period. Organized Dutch farmers and market gardeners devoted more attention at an earlier stage to efficient packaging and presentation techniques than did Belgian, which offers some explanation for the advantage enjoyed by the Dutch in foreign markets. In 1938, Belgium attempted to stimulate domestic and foreign sales by setting up the Office National des Débouchés Agricoles et Horticoles (ONDAH – National Office for Sales of Agricultural and Horticultural Products). Belgian sales organizations exported mainly luxury products, such as asparagus, cauliflower and grapes. Another of these products was the ‘Belgian endive’, the blanched crown of the chicory plant; it was nota bene a Belgian ‘discovery’ dating from the 1830s and became popular among a richer domestic and foreign public from the 1890s onwards. By 1938, Belgium produced more than 70 000 tons of this crop for not only the European market, but also the American. In the Netherlands, the Centraal Bureau van de Tuinbouwveilingen (CBT – Central Bureau for Horticultural Auctions, 1917) and the Crisis-Zuivelbureau (Crisis Bureau for Dairy Food, 1934) promoted their products for both the domestic and the foreign market. They launched pretty successful publicity campaigns of sales promotion by professionals for products of the Dutch Het Westland (the West Land) greenhouse area and for Dutch butter and cheese. The Crisis Bureau for Dairy Food also succeeded in making the drinking of milk obligatory in schools and this kept the effects of the crisis of the 1930s on cattle breeders low. As a reaction to the growing international competition, farmers in both countries stressed the regional origin of their products, such as cheese from Gouda, smoked sausage from Gelderland, table grapes from Hoeilaart or Westland, strawberries from Wépion or Paterswolde. At the end of the nineteenth century, retailing, too, began a process of transformation. The importance of local markets gradually declined, while the number of shops (in absolute terms and per multiple of inhabitants) and the range of products that they offered increased, even in rural areas. At the same time, retailing evolved from being a traditional activity whereby the seller was often also the producer or part-producer, to pure distribution. Experience became less important, because in groceries many goods were now delivered ready for sale and pre-packed. Opening a shop consequently became a rather easy way to supplement the low income of many families during the crisis of the 1930s. This development in turn gave rise to increasing competition. The total number of retail shops in Belgium rose between 1930 and 1937 from c. 230 000 to c. 290 000, of which more than 75 per cent sold foodstuffs or beverages (the figures exclude restaurants and bars) (Heyrman: 460–462). Although local shops with a wide range of products retained their importance until the Second World War, specialized shops had their own and often demanding clientele. In the Netherlands, for instance, specialist shops for vegetables and fruit appeared in most towns around 1900, focussing on ‘primeurs’ and in many cases also sold fish. Dairy shops profited 243

Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe, 500–2000

from the introduction of electricity, which enabled new cooling techniques to be used (van Otterloo, 2000). New forms of selling also won a share of the market. In Belgium, multiple stores began to make their mark from 1867 on, when the Delhaize brothers started their enterprise in the surroundings of Charleroi. In the Netherlands, Albert Heijn started in 1895 with his branch-stores, and the Spar multiple stores were launched in 1932. Thanks to pre-packaging, economies of scale, smart advertising and efficient leadership, these chain stores were able to offer competitive prices. Another innovation was represented by the consumer co-operatives. The first off the mark in establishing these were Socialists – in Belgium during the 1880s, in the Netherlands somewhat later – and their co-operative network soon covered the major cities and industrial centres. In Belgium, between the wars, the Catholics developed a similar network of co-operative stores (Welvaart) in rural areas, where groceries, bread, meat products and beverages were sold, while many individual groceries in the Netherlands joined the purchase co-operatives such as Enkabé (1929) and Sperwer (1931). In short, agricultural products came to reach the consumers in many different ways during the first half of the twentieth century: directly from the producers, via door-to-door selling (milk, vegetables, fish), via local markets and as industrial products via groceries and specialized shops, chain stores and co-ops. The flourishing of retail trade reflected the rise in the standard of living. In Belgium, the share of expenditure on foodstuffs in the budget of working-class families fell from about 70 per cent in 1890 to 40 per cent in 1930, a development known as the ‘nutritional transition’, whereas the quality of the daily food intake rose (Scholliers, 1993). As indicated, the agricultural sector in both countries responded quickly to consumers’ expanding budget and changing preferences, and an illustration of this is provided by the rapid advance of the horticultural sector. In areas close to major cities like Brussels, vegetable and fruit growing and small animal breeding all made remarkable progress: among the products were grapes, chicory (Belgian endives), asparagus, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, strawberries, eggs, rabbits and the poulet de Bruxelles or Malines cuckoo (a luxury variety of roasting-chicken). In the Netherlands, the greenhouse area Het Westland, among others, produced expensive grapes of high quality. Moreover, it was not only the elite who were demanding luxury goods; the middle classes, too, had achieved a level of prosperity at which they could afford expensive food. Yet a further factor was education in domestic science – introduced in Belgium during the late nineteenth century and in the Netherlands at the time of the First World War – which taught working-class people to cook properly and to eat a much more varied and healthier diet. Via teachers of home economics, successful cookery books and numerous women’s magazines, the bourgeois dinner with three separate components – meat or fish, vegetables and potatoes, plus a desert to top it off – was adopted gradually by the whole population (van Otterloo, 2000; van Overbeke, 2001). The Second World War severely disrupted all stages of the agro-food chain in both countries. Neither Belgium nor the Netherlands was adequately prepared for that war. Neither was self-sufficient as regards basic products, particularly bread grain, oils and cattle feed. The Belgian government placed an obligation on importers in mid-1939 244



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to build up stocks, laid down cultivation plans for farmers and began to issue ration cards, but all to insufficient effect. A few weeks after the German invasion, the food situation in the country was no better than during the First World War. More so than then, even, the German occupier controlled the production, processing and trading of all agricultural products and foodstuffs, as well as their pricing and rationing. In both Belgium and the Netherlands during the Second World War, a significant proportion of arable farm production and livestock was requisitioned and taken to Germany. The black market flourished again, but the fact that the official supply circuit functioned better than during the First World War meant that, by and large, people suffered less hunger than then, save in the Netherlands during the ‘winter of starvation’ of 1944–45, when the Germans halted the provisioning of towns still in their hands.

8.3 1950–2000 With the memory of food shortages fresh in the mind and with a view to curbing the loss of currency through importing, post-war agricultural policy in the two countries was oriented towards autarchy. There was now, too, a greater preparedness to accept government intervention in the agricultural market. In Belgium, the transition from dirigisme to free enterprise and the free market proved to be a slow process, and it was only in 1949–50 that an end came to mandatory cultivation plans, crop requisitioning, rationing and maximum prices. Because butter remained scarce and expensive for so long, lucrative smuggling of butter from the Netherlands thrived. Dutch agriculture recovered more rapidly and by 1950 pre-war levels of production and exports had been overtaken (Knibbe, 1993: 210–214).

Farming for the European market Earlier than expected, however, agriculture in both countries again found itself faced with saturation and falling prices, prompting the governments in the 1950s to turn to price-support and guaranteed prices for such products as wheat, milk destined for consumption, potatoes and sugar beet. Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg had already set up a customs union (the Benelux) in 1944, but, fearing competition from cheaper and qualitatively superior Dutch dairy and horticultural products, Belgian and Luxembourg farmers extracted an agricultural protocol in 1947 that guaranteed cost-covering minimum prices for imports and thereby gave them de facto protection. The Netherlands, meanwhile, was concentrating fully on the broader European market. As early as 1950, the Minister of Agriculture, Sicco Mansholt, launched a plan for maximum agricultural integration within the six countries of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). The Netherlands and France were the great advocates for the liberalization of the intra-European agricultural market, but their plans for a Green Pool initially met with little response in German and Belgian agricultural circles – in Belgium, because farms were in a weak competitive position, due to their cost structure: namely, higher land prices and rentals than in the 245

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Illustration 8.5  The International Fair for Motorized Agriculture in Brussels, 1957, poster

Netherlands. However, difficulties in selling the rapidly rising domestic production and the absence of a viable future for young farming people served to change minds in Belgium from the mid-1950s on. Just as the Dutch, who had been producing for the export market longer and more intensively, the Belgian agricultural sector hoped that the establishment of a large, European common market would give it readier access to new areas within that market. Furthermore, governments and farmers’ organizations expected the common market to generate price increases. Dutch 246



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farmers and horticulturalists, too, did not react with unbounded enthusiasm to the plans for European integration. Belgium and the Netherlands were among the first six member states of the European Economic Community that started to function in 1958. For the Belgian and the Dutch agricultural sector, accession meant both a radical reining-in of the protective and supportive policy that had been pursued at national level and an opportunity to benefit from the export perspectives on the large and well protected European market (Van Molle, 1987; Vermeulen, 1989; van Merriënboer, 2006). During these years, Belgium and the Netherlands experienced a veritable metamorphosis. The 1950s saw a gradual rise in prosperity, brought about partly by universal social security (both countries introduced mandatory social insurance in the 1940s for all wage-earners), and the favourable economic climate of the 1960s, boosted by the broader market opportunities within the EEC, led to a sharp rise in family income. At the same time, a population increase got under way, which between about 1950 and 2000, resulted in the population of Belgium climbing from 8.5 million to 10.2 million, and of the Netherlands from 10 million to as many as 15.9 million. Over these years, burgeoning market demand for high-quality food has gone hand with modernization of the agricultural sector. The production of basic foods, such as potatoes and bread grain, has declined further in favour of production sectors with high value added, such as horticulture, the pork and beef sector, poultry rearing and the milk industry. In the context of increasing domestic and European demands and expectations from both consumers and authorities, the farmers, cattle breeders and horticulturalists of the Low Countries had continually to adjust. In Belgium, the total volume of production doubled between 1960 and 2000. In the horticultural sector, the increase was as much 212 per cent, with decorative plant growing and vegetable growing posting rises of 270 and 110 per cent respectively, though these were not matched in fruit growing (up just 55 per cent). Agriculture did relatively less well, recording growth of about 85 per cent. In cattle breeding, the increase was about 100 per cent, but here, too, there were substantial internal differences. The production of eggs and milk expanded by barely 10 per cent, whereas meat production (particularly non-pasture-raised) went up by 170 per cent. Above all, the increasing production volumes were the result of a remarkable process of intensification and specialization. Per hectare in the Netherlands, the average yields of winter wheat grew from 4.1 tonnes hectare in the 1950s to 8.4 tonnes in 1996–2000, those of consumption potatoes over the same period from 25 tonnes to 60 tonnes; the sugar-beet yield more or less doubled and the milk yield rose from 4 000 kg in 1950 to 6 600 kg by the end of the twentieth century. The Dutch horticultural, pig and poultry sectors were also characterized by a spectacular increase in output. What stands out most is that this growth was achieved with fewer farmers and agricultural workers at fewer enterprises. In Belgium, the number of agricultural enterprises declined from 215 000 in 1950, to 175 000 in 1960, 79 000 in 1980 and to barely 42 000 in 2000. There was a similar decline in the Netherlands from about 245 000 enterprises in 1947 to still 235 000 in 1960, 130 000 in 1980 and to just 97 500 in 2000. Simultaneously, Dutch producers of wheat succeeded in expanding their acreage by 50 247

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per cent (to 140 000 ha), and the acreage of sugar beet even doubled (from 60 000 to 120 000 ha). The necessity to mechanize, specialize and increase scale to remain competitive, all within a context of falling agricultural prices, served to accelerate the abandonment of the farming way of life. In Belgium and the Netherlands, the average income of farmers during the second half of the twentieth century remained virtually systematically below that of non-farmers: in 1950, the income of a farmer was estimated at just 55 per cent of that of a non-farmer; in 1970, at 75 per cent; and in 1980, at 60 per cent. At the same time, most agricultural workers turned their backs on the land, as they could earn better money in industry and the tertiary sector, a development that created difficulties for the big farming concerns in Groningen, for example. Furthermore, agricultural workers became too expensive: because of collective labour agreements in the Netherlands their wages increased by a factor of 30 between 1945 and 1990, whereas the price level of the most important agricultural products only tripled over that period. In an effort to reduce the disparity in incomes and to cope with the high cost of labour, mechanization and modernization were turned to. There was a rapid replacement of draught horses by tractors during the 1950s and hand milking was replaced by machine milking during the 1960s, with a further development to computer-guided milking robots during the 1990s. In arable farming, increasingly more powerful and high-performance sowing, planting and harvesting machines were employed for grain, maize, beet and potatoes, and the same occurred in field vegetable growing (for leeks, to take an example). In many instances now, farmers no longer own state-of-the-art machines, but turn rather to specialist firms. The governments in both countries underpinned the modernization process, promoting land consolidation (in Belgium legislation of 1956, 1970 and subsequent years; in the Netherlands, legislation of 1954 and 1985; see van den Bergh, 2006) and corporate investment, this last by, among other things, making lending cheaper (viz. the establishment of the Agricultural Investment Fund in 1961 in Belgium and the Development and Reorganization Fund in 1963 in the Netherlands). In 1972, new European directives permitted an interest subsidy on investments. With the help of these subsidies traditional stables were swiftly replaced by cow cubicles in the Netherlands (Priester, 2000: 111). Agricultural concerns also sought to drive up production by recourse to the results of scientific research (especially in chemistry, biotechnology and veterinary science). Scientists and the research departments of ancillary companies developed new crops or crop varieties, improved cultivation and breeding processes (this last including artificial insemination) and introduced new concentrates, artificial fertilizers, means of plant protection and medicines against cattle diseases. The financial cost of modernization and the know-how it demanded ushered in the decline of the mixed farm in favour of specialization. Now, agricultural and horticultural concerns concentrate on a few specific sub-sectors, crops and cultivation methods. In Belgium, post-war pig rearing and cattle breeding scored particularly well on the national and international market with the Piétrain pig and the Belgian breed of White and Blue double-muscled cattle; moreover, the cultivation of hard fruit revived with the introduction of the halfstandard fruit tree, among others for the Jonagold apple introduced from the United States in 1967 by a Flemish grower. 248



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From the 1970s on, new life was breathed into the cultivation of, for example, strawberries, chicory, tomatoes and lettuce varieties, as well as houseplants, with the introduction of hydroponics, a technique discovered in Switzerland by a Dutchman. In the Netherlands co-operation between the Institute of Agricultural Technique of the University of Wageningen and individual firms and organizations led to the adaptation of innovations imported from abroad to the Dutch situation, for instance in the field of drainage. Wageningen University, as well as other technical universities, developed a range of innovations in water management and Dutch agriculture was extremely successful in the improvement of plant and animal breeding. Moreover, the agricultural industry tried to bump up added value by developing a range of new products, with the result that the consumer was confronted with vegetables virtually unseen before (paprika, mushrooms,), new fruit varieties (golden delicious and elstar among the apple family) and new meat varieties and dairy products, etc. However, increasing specialization in rearing and growing went hand in hand with an increasing dependence on suppliers (for know-how, capital, raw materials, machines, pesticides and herbicides, for instance) and on domestic and foreign market developments. After the Second World War, the Netherlands looked to restore her ‘lost’ export position as soon as possible and was reasonable successful in this. In 1950, the gross production value (in current prices) of Dutch agriculture amounted to 4.3 billion guilders; by 2000, it had increased by a factor of 10 to 43.4 million guilders (Knibbe, 1993: 287; LEI, 2001: VI). The share exports in total output grew to 75 per cent (LEI 2005, 10), Germany soon again becoming the most important importer of Dutch agricultural products, accounting for more than 50 per cent. From the early 1960s onwards, ‘Frau Antje’ became the ambassador/promoter of Dutch cheese and butter. Behind Germany came other countries of the EEC (subsequently the European Union) as important buyers of Dutch products. From the 1980s onwards, new markets were exploited, including the Arab States, Canada and the USA. The most important export products were horticulture products, such as tomatoes, lettuce and cucumbers. In the early 1990s, exports to Germany decreased slightly, because Dutch tomatoes had acquired a negative image as Wasserbomben (water bombs); however, the introduction of new varieties (among which cherry tomatoes and bunch tomatoes) resulted in the situation slowly being reversed. Around the turn of the century, the Netherlands was, behind the United States the most important net exporter in terms of value of agricultural products and foodstuffs, more particularly pork, cheese, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, flowers and flower bulbs. After the Second World War, Belgian agricultural and horticultural exports came to exhibit a more or less similar orientation to Dutch; around 2000, Belgium held sixth place in the world among agricultural-product and food exporters. Exports consist chiefly of pork and chicken, as well as vegetables, and some 80 per cent of them are accounted for by Flanders, which is also the world’s biggest exporter of leeks and deep-frozen vegetables. Since 1995, agricultural products have accounted for about 10 per cent of Belgian exports in terms of value (LEI, 2001: 58; Van Hecke, 2003). 249

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Agribusiness: the production side Agricultural and horticultural concerns have made increasing use of such external input as seed, young plants, cattle feed and artificial fertilizer since the Second World War: indeed, product processing and marketing are also now largely in the hands of third parties. The role of such concerns has been drastically reduced to that of just another link in the long and complex chain of ancillary and processing industries, support services and distribution channels, what is known as ‘the agribusiness complex’. Many farms have taken on the character of breeding stations that turn semi-finished products (seed, flower bulbs, seed potatoes, piglets, calves, etc.) into fully fledged agricultural and horticultural products. As a result, their creation of added value and their impact on the operation of the market and price setting has declined, which has had consequences for the development of farming income. The longer the chain, the looser the grip of farmers on the market. And radical change has also come to the other links in the chain, such as the ancillary and processing industries, and distribution. A striking example of this process is offered by the post-war developments in the intensive, indoor pig-rearing industry in Flanders (province of West Flanders and the Antwerp Campine region) and the Netherlands (sandy soils of North Brabant). Specialization began very quickly after the Second World War, and was accompanied by separation between regions and farms that concentrated on the production of breeding-sows, the raising of piglets or, in other cases, fattening for slaughter. Further up in the chain, specialist stock dealers and firms of slaughterers undertook the collection, distribution and export of pigs and pork. By the mid-1980s, more than half of Dutch and Belgian (Flemish) pork production was destined for the export market. The expansion of the pig sector after the Second World War rested largely on imports of cheap animal feed via the ports of Antwerp, Zeebrugge and Rotterdam, this last termed ‘the Rotterdam gateway’ by Dutch corn growers. The fact that these ports were close by and had good links with their hinterlands gave Flemish and Dutch farmers an important cost advantage vis-à-vis others in Europe. The imports were necessary, as the domestic market could not provide sufficient grain and maize to cover requirements (the total consumption of stock fed quintupled between 1950 and 1980 in Belgium) and the skimmed milk that had previously been used to feed pigs was now being increasingly employed to produce cheese. The requisite protein in pig feed thus had to come from replacement products and here, too, the favourable geographic location of the Low Countries played a crucial role in the mass import of cheap grain replacements, such as soya meal, maize gluten and tapioca meal. By around 1985, the Dutch animal-feed industry was importing approximately two thirds of its raw materials from countries outside the European Community. The animal-feed industry did more, though, than just producing and selling feed. It concluded contracts with pig and poultry breeders that were of benefit to both parties: a guaranteed market for the feed producers at favourable prices for the breeders. The contracts sometimes also included credit facilities for the expansion of herds or the building of new sties. The meat industry, too, began to offer similar facilities. What is indicated here, of course, is that stock farmers were becoming increasingly dependent 250



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on various links in the food chain. After the Second World War, contract farming – a form of vertical integration – became widespread in other sectors, too. Around 1975, more than half of Belgian sugar beet, pea, carrot, chicory, hop, pig, poultry and cerealseed production was conducted through contract farming. In the Netherlands between 1990 and 2002, the share of beef meat companies with contracts grew from 7 to 35 per cent ; the share of pig companies from 5 to 16 per cent and of poultry farms from 5 to 9 per cent. Moreover, the role of supermarkets and big chain stores (with their enormous demand for dairy products through contracts with the dairy processing industry) has constantly increased, leading to part of the agricultural sector acting as no more than supplier of raw materials to the processing industry. It also means that the industry itself has come to exercise a profound influence on farming matters, in order to ensure itself of a continuous and qualitatively uniform supply of agricultural and horticultural products. Uniformity, moreover, can be far-reaching: the choice of plant types and varieties on the market has become limited; holders of a ‘breeder right’ have acquired sole rights to the sale of seed and propagation material; and in some cases the farmer cannot propagate from the plant because it has been made infertile, meaning that the plant breeder has provided himself with a biological patent (LEI 2009, 75).

Agribusiness: the processing side Developments on the production side have been paralleled on the processing side: more particularly in respect of innovation, mechanization, standardization and scalingup. What stands out is the deep-seated influence of chemistry in the food industry, including the ever tighter controls on food safety and the increasing trend towards concentration on an international scale. This is the case, for example, with the public and private slaughterhouses and the meat-processing industry, which have boomed in the Netherlands and Belgium since the Second World War. Increasingly stricter national and European regulation in respect of quality, hygiene and (subsequently) animal welfare, plus greater market competition prompted a capital-intensive process of modernization that brought mergers and co-operation agreements in its wake. In 1995, for instance, two cooperative concerns and a private abattoir merged in the Netherlands to become a single, big player, namely Dumeco (Dutch United Meat Company), with head office in Boxtel. At that time, the company had fifteen establishments in the Netherlands and could slaughter up to 160 000 animals per week, with approximately 60 per cent of production going abroad. Eight years later, together with other abattoirs and meat concerns, Dumeco was taken over by Vion N.V., which became then the biggest meat company in Europe. Vion has only one shareholder, namely the Zuidelijke Land- en Tuinbouworganisatie (ZLTO, Southern Agriculture and Horticulture Organization), by far the most powerful of the major Dutch farmers organizations. A similar trend towards concentration has been apparent in other processing sectors, too: more particularly in brewing, malting, milling and sugar refining, in dairy production and in the preserved-food industry. In the Netherlands during the 251

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mid-1950s, there were twenty or so potato-flour factories active, fifteen of them on a co-operative basis; three decades later, potato flour was being produced at just three locations. The Low Countries have produced a number of leading multinationals, including a number of world players, such as the Anglo-Dutch company Unilever, next to Heineken, Friesland Campina and Interfood from the Netherlands, and Interbrew from Belgium. The reverse has also occurred, with smaller, family businesses being absorbed by big foreign companies, as in the case of the Belgian chocolate manufacturer Côte d’Or and the biscuit-makers De Beukelaar and Parein by Kraft Foods. Dutch companies have clearly managed to position themselves more strongly than Belgian in the constellation of international food concerns, perhaps as a consequence of the long and rich mercantile tradition of the Netherlands, although companies have been taken over, too, such as Nutricia by Danone and Friesland Dairy Foods, and Victoria by General Biscuits. Horizontal concentration has become a particularly marked feature of especially the dairy industry. In Belgium, where, on the eve of the Second World War, dairy factories were processing no more than half of total milk production, the trend got under way during and after the war, following the occupier’s introduction of mandatory pasteurization. Local (often co-operative) hand-worked and small steam-powered dairy factories were absorbed into regional and provincial combinations and thereafter into national and international companies, the number of farms falling from 641 in 1937 to 216 or so in 1961 and to 135 in 1970 (Van Molle, 1986: 170). This horizontal concentration has permitted modernization to be financed, transport and operating costs to be squeezed and new products to be developed to meet the evolving taste of consumers (viz. the success of chocolate milk and yoghurt), as well as the boosting of demand. The general adoption from the 1970s on of the milk cooling tank on farms and of refrigerated tankers to transport milk to the factory brought about a further improvement in the quality of milk, but also encouraged the further centralization of processing. For dairy farmers, all this reinforced the process of alienation that was in progress: the geographical and psychological distance between them and the (co-operative) dairy farms became all the greater. The beginning of the 1990s saw the setting up of the Belgische Zuivelunie (BZU – a Belgian dairy co-operative company) and the milk processing company Belgomilk, which in turn merged in 2005 with the co-operative company Milcobel that processes a growing part of Belgian milk production and is also active in France. In the Netherlands, one big player remained after a process of mergers that started as far back as the late nineteenth century when, in 1898, a number of Friesian cooperative dairies amalgamated to form Frico. This company produced predominantly cheese and exported to the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria and other countries (Vernooij 2007). In 1980, Frico merged with DOMO, a conglomerate of dairy companies from the province of Drenthe, which in the main processed skimmed milk. New mergers followed: in the 1990s, with the Friesian CCF and with Coberco; in 2008, with Campina. Today, the new company, Friesland Campina, controls more than 75 per cent of Dutch dairy production and is also the biggest player on the Belgian dairy-product market. 252



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However, not all concerns in the food industry have gone through the same process of industrialization, scaling-up and concentration. Some have remained small-scale and artisanal, producing for a much more regional market and noting that this has brought widening interest in their products these last couple of decades. In the midst of the world of the standard product range characterizing the supermarkets, local products, artisanal production processes and ‘grandmother’s recipes’’ are achieving increasing popularity. Moreover, this is a trend reinforced by consumers’ distrust of the industrialization of food, as well as by environmental consciousness, the (international) ‘slow-food’ movement and the renewed appreciation of family mealtimes.

Distribution and consumption The retail and wholesale distribution sector, too, has experienced radical transformation in the post-war world, a transformation that has moreover raised it to a powerful position within the food chain as a whole. A breakthrough was made during the 1950s and 1960s by the self-service shops and supermarkets, whereby customers were no longer served directly by the shopkeeper, but could now wander at will around the outlet filling a shopping trolley as they went. At the same time, there was a change in the way goods were presented for sale: loose products, sometimes delivered directly by local farmers and market gardeners (potatoes, vegetables, fruit and eggs, for instance), made way for prepacked goods. Offering a wide range of products (including fresh produce from abroad, such as peppers, courgettes, oranges, melons, etc.) at relatively low prices and a self-service experience that was appreciated, as well as parking facilities, the supermarkets drove out both typical local shops and specialist outlets (greengrocers, for example) and furthermore put pressure on the weekly markets in towns and villages. And from the 1960s, many women also found themselves with less time to go shopping, certainly in Flanders, as they were going out to work in increasing numbers. The greater accessibility of car-ownership and the spread of the refrigerator and the deep freezer led to families shopping for provisions just once a week and not necessarily in the immediate vicinity. At the same time, growing one’s own produce diminished in importance and vegetable plots in the back garden were transformed into lawns and flower borders. Recent research points to the food chain today being largely controlled by the supermarkets. Given the continuing concentration in the distribution sector, it is just a few chain stores that determine what products reach the racks and at what price. In order to protect themselves against the wholesale distributors and to command satisfactory selling prices, farmers and market gardeners have in turn tried to organize themselves better, more particularly in co-operative sales associations, such as the auctions in the fruit and vegetable sector. In 1980, approximately 40 per cent of the Belgian vegetable harvest was sold via auction. However, the developments in the Netherlands clearly show that the impact of producers (through the establishment of auctions) on the food chain has been rather limited. Mergers continued unabated: in 1947, there were 162 auctions; by 1992, merely 23 remained. In 1996, nine horticulture auctions joined forces in a further merger, establishing at the same time the sales organization Greenery 253

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International, which was responsible for the sale, distribution and marketing of the produce of nearly 2 500 horticulture farms (Bieleman, 2008: 564–566). Meanwhile, rising prosperity has served to broaden the diversity and increase the quality of the range of food on offer, whereas the share of food in the family budget has declined. In Belgium, shortly after the war, the average family was spending virtually half its income on provisions (food and beverages); by the beginning of the 1960s, that figure had fallen to approximately 38 per cent and, to about 22 per cent around 1980; since the turn of the century, it has been just 16 per cent (Statbel). The trend has been more or less the same in the Netherlands. In other words, daily food has become (relatively) cheaper, more varied and better. What before the war was considered a luxury is now regarded as everyday, such as chicken, fine vegetables and fruit (including exotic fruit like oranges, bananas and kiwis). Bread and potatoes have lost importance in favour of breakfast cereals, croquettes, rice and pasta. There has also been a sharp decline in the consumption of milk, whereas the consumption of dairy products has revived, i.e. in the form of cheeses, yoghurt, ice cream and milk drinks with chocolate flavour (such as Chocomel in the Netherlands and Cécémel in Belgium). At the end of the 1950s, Sterovita, later integrated into Melkunie, added orange juice to milk. The ‘Mona-toetjes’ (or Mona desserts), developed by an Amsterdam company that introduced fruit yoghurts on the market, followed by ready-made pudding, became the biggest success. A substantial part of the turnover of Friesland Campina comes from the Mona factories. Besides industrial ready-made meals, fast food and ‘light’ products, the consumer is also being offered more absolutely fresh food, sometimes imported from far and wide. However, the internationalization of eating culture has worked to the disadvantage of the domestic agricultural and horticultural sector. Since the late nineteenth century, the consumption of butter, for example, has been under pressure from that of the cheaper or healthier margarine, and in more recent decades also from the rising popularity of olive oil. The post-war period has also seen a virtual doubling of meat consumption per head, particularly of pork and chicken, which stands to reason, given the strong growth of the respective branches of production in the Low Countries. However, intensive stock rearing and the culture of meat have come under mounting pressure from the vegetarian movement and animal welfare organizations that gained a firmer footing during the 1980s and 1990s. Among the wide public, too, a more cagey attitude began to manifest itself, arising particularly from respect of health considerations prompted by successive instances of cattle sickness and scandals concerning swine fever, foot-and-mouth disease, mad cow disease (BSE), the use of hormones in cattle breeding and (particularly in Belgium) the dioxin crisis in 1999, which was caused by contaminated animal feed. All these developments have created a gulf between producer and consumer. As research shows, children now barely know how and by whom food is produced. At the same time, a counter-movement has got under way. The open days in Dutch horticulture farms, known as ‘Kom in de Kas’ (come into the green house), have attracted thousands of visitors each year since 1977. Since 1980, some Belgian and Dutch farmers have been organizing farmers’ markets and, in farm-door selling, have found both a new market and a supplementary income, not to mention a renewed contact with consumers. Some 254



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farmers have renewed the practice of home delivery, allow customers to come and pick and harvest for themselves, or have opened a farm restaurant, a Bed&Breakfast business or a hotel. In this way, they are taking advantage of the increasing success of eating out and weekend tourism. The rural guilds of the Boerenbond, the biggest Flemish farmers’ association, have since the 1980s been organizing the annual Dag van de Landbouw (Agriculture Day) and ‘rural classes’, have directed interested people to ‘show farms’ and have developed ‘agricultural awareness paths’, all of which has in turn boosted farm tourism. The increasing number of farm campsites in the Netherlands is illustrative of the renewed contact between producer and consumer. Once again, the short chain between producer and consumer can be seen in the ‘food teams’ that have come into being (in Flanders, the association of this name was set up in 1996 on a Japanese model), namely groups of ten or more households that together purchase fresh food from local producers, thereby seeking to support sustainable production methods and promote the regional economy. A small, but aware, group of farmers and consumers turned its back on the industrialization of food production and opted for biologically or ecologically oriented farming. This movement began during the 1970s in the Low Countries and struck a chord with a limited public prepared to pay a little more for ‘natural food’. In 2008, bio-agriculture accounted for 2.6 per cent of the agricultural acreage in Belgium (more in Wallonia than in Flanders) and 2.5 per cent of it in the Netherlands. However, the consciousness-raising effect of this is not to be underestimated. With the support of the environmental movement and the environment-conscious consumer, bio-agriculture has prompted mainstream producers to adopt agricultural techniques more in harmony with the environment. A further push in this direction is being given by ever stricter national and European regulation in respect of muck spreading, the use of pesticides and herbicides, etc. Furthermore, this niche market of bio-agriculture still offers prospects of growth: in Belgium, where in 2006 bio-food accounted for nearly 2 per cent of household expenditure, supply has difficulties in meeting domestic demand. These initiatives form part of the activity-broadening process that has taken place in many farms in Belgium and the Netherlands since 1980. Because of evolving social needs and expectations, and partly also to increase their income, these farms have begun to develop other activities alongside or in combination with their production activity. They undertake nature and landscape management (so-called ‘green services’), and water management (‘blue services’), develop farming and rural tourism, organize rural and nature education or, on care farms, contribute towards the integration of vulnerable individuals (the under-privileged, sick or handicapped people, etc.). The fact that, in both countries, they can obtain subsidies for this is an indication of to what extent the agricultural sector and society in general are exhibiting new forms of approach, and gaining mutual respect.

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Bibliography Baudet, H. (1986) Een vertrouwde wereld. 100 jaar innovatie in Nederland, Amsterdam. Bavel, B. J. P. van (1999) ‘Arable yields and total arable output in the Netherlands from the late Middle Ages to the mid-nineteenth century’, in B. J. P. van Bavel and E. Thoen (eds), Land productivity and agro-systems in the North Sea Area (Middle Ages – twentieth century) Elements for comparison, Turnhout, pp. 85–113. Bergh, S. van den (2004) Verdeeld land. De geschiedenis van de ruilverkaveling in Nederland vanuit een lokaal perspectief, 1890–1895, Historia Agriculturae XXXV, Groningen and Wageningen. Bieleman, J. (2008) Boeren in Nederland. Geschiedenis van de landbouw, 1500–2000, Amsterdam. Bieleman, J. (2010) Five centuries of farming: a short history of Dutch agriculture 1500–2000, Wageningen. Blomme, J. (1992) The economic development of Belgian agriculture, 1880–1980. A quantitative and qualitative analysis, Brussels. Dejongh, G. (2001) ‘Bevolking en voeding in een premoderne economie. Onderzoek naar de demografische en agrarische groei van de Zuidelijke Nederlanden/België in de eeuw 1750–1850’, Tijdschrift van Dexia Bank, 215, pp. 27–43. Dijck, M. Van (2008) De wetenschap van de wetgever. De klassieke politieke economie en het Belgische landbouwbeleid, Leuven. Hecke, E. Van (2003) Agrarische geografie, Leuven. Henry, A. (1924) Le ravitaillement de la Belgique pendant la guerre, Paris. Heyrman, P. (1998) Middenstandsbeweging en beleid in België, 1918–1940. Tussen vrijheid en regulering, Leuven. Jacobs, M. and Scholliers, P. (eds) (2002) Buitenshuis eten in de lage landen sinds 1800, Brussels. Knaap, D. (2004) ‘Voor geld is altijd wel een plaats te vinden’. De firma W.A. Scholten (1841–1892). De eerste Nederlandse multinational, Groningen. Knibbe, M. (1993) Agriculture in the Netherlands 1851–1950. Production and institutional change, Amsterdam. Kooij, P. (1985) ‘Stad en platteland’, in F.L. van Holthoon (ed.), De Nederlandse samenleving sinds 1815, Assen and Maastricht, pp. 93–119. LEI (2001, 2005, 2009) Landbouw-economisch bericht, Den Haag. Lindemans, P. (1952) Geschiedenis van de landbouw in België, Antwerp. Merriënboer, J. van (2006) Mansholt. Een biografie, Amsterdam. Molle, L. Van (1986) ‘Innovation technologique et changement social: le cas de l’agriculture belge, XIXe et XXe siècles’, in G. Kurgan-van Hentenryk and J. Stengers (eds), L’innovation technologique. Facteur de changement (XIXe-XXe siècles), Brussels, pp. 153–184. Molle, L. Van (1987) ‘Le milieu agricole belge face à la ‘concurrence européenne’: 1944–1958’, in M. Dumoulin (ed.), La Belgique et les débuts de la construction européenne de la guerre aux traités de Rome, Louvain-la-Neuve, pp. 119–143.

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Otterloo, A.H. van (2000) ‘Voeding’, in: Techniek in Nederland in de twintigste eeuw, vol. 3, Zutphen, pp. 236–374. Overbeke, P. van (2001) Kachels, geisers en fornuizen. Keuzeprocessen en energieverbruik in Nederlandse huishoudens 1920–1975, Hilversum. Pilat, D. (1989) Dutch Agricultural performance 1846–1926, Historia Agriculturae XIX, Groningen. Priester, P.R. (2000) ‘Het melkveehouderijbedrijf ’, in Techniek in Nederland in de twintigste eeuw, vol. 3, Zutphen, pp. 99–125. Scholliers, P. (1993) Arm en rijk aan tafel. Tweehonderd jaar eetcultuur in België, Berchem. Schoonberghe, E. Van (ed.) (1996), Jenever in de Lage Landen, Brugge. Segers, Y. (2003) Economische groei en levensstandaard. Particuliere consumptie en voedselverbruik in België, 1800–1913, Leuven. Segers, Y. and Molle, L. Van (eds) (2004) Leven van het land. Boeren in België, 1750–2000, Leuven. Statbel.fgov.be Statistical yearbook of the Netherlands 2008 (2008), Voorburg and Heerlen. Vanhaute, E. (1992) Heiboeren. Bevolking, arbeid en inkomen in de 19de-eeuwse Kempen, Brussels. Vermeulen, W.H. (1989) Europees landbouwbeleid in de maak. Mansholts eerste plannen, Historia Agriculturae XX, Groningen. Vernooij, A. (2007) ‘Nederland zuivelland’, in Geschiedenis van het boerenleven in Nederland, vol. 29, Zwolle, pp. 682–704. Zanden, J. L. van and Riel, A. van (2000) Nederland 1780–1914. Staat, instituties en ­economische ontwikkeling, Amsterdam.

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Illustration 9.1  Geschlachtetes Schwein (slaughtered pig), 1563, ­painting by Joachim Beuckelaer

9 North-west Germany, 1000–1750 Michael Kopsidis and Klaus-Joachim Lorenzen-Schmidt The High Middle Ages, the starting point of the period reviewed here, saw developments that had widespread consequences for trade and agricultural goods. In Germany, those developments unfolded around the turn of the twelfth century. At the beginning of that century, there was acceleration in the pace of population growth and, by mid-century, the spate of urban foundations and extensive internal colonization had set in. North-west Germany experienced these processes as well, albeit later, following the general German trend in respect of the long waves of population growth and the synchronous long-term movements of agricultural prices during the centuries from the High Middle Ages to Modern Times (Abel, 1966). However, despite all similarities it displayed with the rest of Germany, North-west Germany differed significantly from especially the southern and central parts of the country. On average, population density was less and vast areas, such as Friesland and the land between the Rivers Ems and Weser, as well as the Geest region of Schleswig-Holstein, saw only isolated urban settlement foundation. Exceptions to this were the seaports of Bremen, Hamburg and Lübeck, this last being the biggest medieval coastal town, with about 15 000 inhabitants around 1300. Town settlements were concentrated primarily in the very fertile Boerde areas of South Lower Saxony and Westphalia, as well as along navigable rivers. The only conurbation comparable to those in Flanders and northern Italy took shape in the plain of the Northern Rhineland, with its paramount centre Cologne, the only important metropolis of European stature within the area under review. Populationwise, though, even a medieval boom-town like Cologne showed only relatively moderate growth, the number of its inhabitants rising from about 20 000 to 44 500 between 1150 and 1750, whereby almost the whole increase – about 90 per cent – took place during the main period of expansion until about 1430, by when Cologne’s population had already reached 40 000. Unlike that in southern and central Germany, the farming system in North-west Germany, beyond the fertile Boerde areas and some of the marshlands, still depended predominantly on extensive farming, with overall low-intensity land use that often yielded far below what the three-field system produced. On the whole, animal husbandry played a more important role in North-west Germany than in the south or centre of the country, even though it also experienced the two phases of Vergetreidung (cerealization), first during the High Middle Ages and then throughout the sixteenth century and into the early seventeenth. It would, however, be wrong to conclude that the forms of extensive farming and animal husbandry practiced in North-west Germany meant remoteness from the market. Although it is true that the aspect of self-supply was clearly given priority in most parts of this area, live cattle and preserved animal products – ham, as well as cheese, for instance – soon came to be traded over wide areas and there were clear tendencies 261

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towards regional specialization in a few favoured regions. A fact that is, to a certain extent, also true of grain. Whereas trade in live cattle was naturally more suited to overland routing, since they could simply be driven hundreds of kilometres through the interior areas, trade in cereals necessarily depended on the presence of navigable waterways, along either coasts or rivers such as the Weser, Ems or Elbe. It is estimated that a ratio of 10:2:1 applied to bulk transport overland, by inland waterway and by sea in medieval North-west Germany (Hauptmeyer, 1997: 359). Inland waterway haulage was complicated by the fact that most rivers were only semi-navigable and its efficiency was further impaired by the presence of numerous man-made barriers, such as mills, customs and staple places. Despite all demand-induced phases of rapid agrarian intensification, whose effect was normally only local, the actual transformation or – even better – leap from extensive to intensive livestock farming did not take place before the mid-eighteenth century, and ultimately only in consequence of the internal colonization of Modern Times, which started in the eighteenth century when it proved possible for vast areas of wasteland – large moors and fens, heathland and marshlands, for example – to be put to agricultural use or simply to branches of production other than sheep husbandry (Kopsidis, 2012). Thus, the natural environment determined the scope of not only agricultural production, but also agricultural trade. Within this context, only those areas could be considered that were to provide the opportunity for considerable market production other than sheep husbandry: hence, only those soils that were highly fertile and easily accessible by navigable waterway. The marshlands of rivers and coasts, therefore, were prime candidates. They offered optimum conditions for export-oriented animal husbandry and, what is more, could, if necessary, be alternatively used to cultivate highyielding wheat to meet commercial aims. Marketable surpluses, especially – but not exclusively – from grain cultivation, could also be obtained from the fertile loess soils of the Boerde areas of South Lower Saxony, Westphalia and the Northern Rhineland, all the more so because these areas proved easily accessible, since they were in many instances blessed with navigable rivers. East Holstein and East Schleswig, with their clay soils and deep narrow fjords on the Baltic Sea, provided similarly favourable conditions. Not so with the large Geest landscapes (morains) in northern Germany. Starting in Westmünsterland and East Westphalia, stretching between the Rivers Ems and Weser, and covering the land ridge of Schleswig-Holstein, the less fertile moor- and heathlands, and sandy soils of this vast area clearly proved an obstacle to advancing intensification, if not preventing it (Hauptmeyer, 1997: 347). The next section provides a brief outline of the secular price trends of agricultural produce and grains during the period under review. It is noticeable that, throughout Europe, the long-term movements of grain prices ran more or less parallel with the trends of demographic development. North-west Germany was no different in this. However, it would be misleading to conclude that supra-regional market processes generally prevailed over local processes; indeed, it was only in a few coastal regions that they did. Within this context, it was the local harvest yield alone that determined the sometimes quite sharp short-term price fluctuations in the greater part of North-west Germany throughout the entire period under investigation. 263

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A better understanding of these market mechanisms can be gained by tracing the different, regional, agricultural development paths of North-west Germany between 1000 and 1750, as exemplified by three regions representative of the three prevalent systems of markets and distribution channels. The differences arose primarily from the distinctions in urban-rural relationships, with – in part – far-reaching repercussions on the Grundherrschaft (manorial system). The chosen regions are an urban one with favourable agricultural conditions, a relatively isolated and rural one and a fertile, coastal one with both a strongly market-oriented agriculture and a highly developed infrastructure. The first region is the highly urbanized northern Rhine Valley, with its extensions up to the Westphalian Hellweg between the Rivers Lippe and Ruhr, with soils both very fertile and easy to work, and with politically powerful towns creating high local demand. The second is the often barely accessible hinterland north of the River Lippe up to the coast, with a by and large relatively low urban density. The third consists of the coastal areas along the North Sea, stretching far beyond the border of today’s Denmark and with fertile marshes that were cultivated by highly commercial, independent communities of ‘free’ peasants; communities that produced independently and autonomously in order to satisfy a distant urban demand – regardless of whether in the Low Countries or the Rhineland – and that, at least to a certain extent, were able to maintain their trade relations, even when subject to a territorial authority (Landesherrschaft) or a city in the immediate vicinity, such as Hamburg. Altogether, in the High Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, there was probably no other German region with such a strong orientation towards commercial agriculture than these marshlands, which were almost devoid of towns and dominated by a class of well-off medium- and large-sized peasant families. Here, long-distance trading was frequently organized as a kind of peasant private enterprise as early as the High Middle Ages. The final section focuses on the importance of subsistence farming in agriculture during the period under review and how it was connected with aspects of food security and nutrition, the intention being to bring into greater relief a widely uniform pattern that surfaces regardless of regional differences. Despite all the various agricultural trade relationships, the fact remains that nutrition in rural areas depended four-square on self-sufficiency; surpluses had to go to feed the majority of nearby urban populations in the absence of alternative sources of supply.

9.1 Long cyclical waves in the agricultural economy, demographic trends and structural changes in agriculture The secular agricultural and demographic upswing that occurred in Europe during the High Middle Ages produced sustained effects in North-west Germany, where, in the twelfth century, it brought about structural changes in the agrarian rural economy. For one thing, the sustained demographic expansion led to high prices for grain, thus enabling peasants steadily to expand grain cultivation and turn more to commercialization (Schmitz, 1968). For another, population pressure drove land-clearance and 264



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territorial expansion in previously unsettled areas. Urbanization and internal colonization prepared the way for the first wave of commercialization in rural North-west Germany, which lasted from the twelfth century to the beginning of the fourteenth; that development was further spurred by the increasing number of Köttern/Kötern/ Kätner (sub-peasant smallholders or cottagers) on their Katen/Kotten/Koten (smallholdings or cottages), who often had to rely on off-farm extra income to make a living. Furthermore, in the Altsiedelgebiete (old area of settlements) stretching from the River Rhine to the South Elbian region along the North Sea, this process was accompanied by the decline of the Carolingian villication system with its marked forms of Hörigkeit (villeinage, servitus), and complex, organized, large manorial estates. Thus, right from the start, the peasant settlers of the newly colonized marshes of the nearby coastal regions managed to establish themselves as co-operatively organized Freibauern (freeholders) who found themselves more or less autonomous, with only a few feudal burdens. At variance with this agrarian system, and with the exception of Friesland, different forms of Rentengrundherrschaft1 prevailed from the twelfth century on, which in the Rhineland already started to evolve into time-limited farm tenancies (Hauptmeyer, 1997, 350–351; Reinicke, 1989).What we see emerging from all this during the High Middle Ages and continuing well into the twentieth century is a virtually integral and main feature of North-west-German agrarian development: namely, the process of commercialization of the agrarian-rural economy being inextricably linked with the increase in peasant family holdings at the expense of large estates. More, the different forms of Eigenbehörigkeit (personal bondage, serfdom) were either becoming weaker or being superseded, even disappearing in the course or – better – as a consequence of the late-medieval agricultural crisis. In the period from the Late Middle Ages to about the Early Modern Period, the legal status of peasants slowly but steadily improved, in accordance with changes in society. The spread and implementation of the Meierrecht2 in the North-west-German regions south of the Elbe river represent a case in point, since they undeniably contributed to a different image of peasants, one no longer of a bonded section of the population, but rather of people enjoying personal freedom and, as a rule, vested with secure property rights to their holdings and land. All in all, in the course of commercialization, except in East Holstein, the North-west-German agriculture followed the same path of agrarian development as agriculture in the Low Countries during this period, though this did not necessarily mean a renunciation of the Grundherrschaft (manorial system), which in fact was left broadly untouched in most parts of North-west Germany until around the beginning of the nineteenth century and certainly did not prevent agrarian society from becoming more and more market-orientated (for a more detailed description, see Chapter 10, North-west 1

2

Rentengrundherrschaft is defined as ‘a rent-providing manorial system without tenant labour service’ (Myking et al., 2007: 285). Meierrecht is defined as ‘a long-term free-farm lease at first only for years and then as a heritable right on condition of payment of a cash-rent (the so-called Meierzins) to the lessor, i.e. the former (manorial) landlord’ (Hübner 1918: 329).

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Germany 1750–2000).3 The contemporaneous erection of large seigniorial water- and windmills from 1200 on clearly points to increasing grain production and bears further witness to increasing commercial activity (Grewe, 2000). With the High Middle Ages seeing the (re)distribution of former Herrenland or Salland ( the terra indominicata or the terra salica respectively of the demesne)4 among the peasantry and the dissolution of the large Fronhöfe (manorial holding belonging to the demesne), the subsequent late-medieval agrarian crisis was marked by the decline of the monastic Grangie (the entire agricultural property complex of a monastery, especially Cistercian). The Grangien were intentionally consolidated, rationally managed large estates of between 50 and 400 ha, with an average size of 150–200 ha, and were, among others, the prevailing form of estate of the Cistercian order, an order that often led the way in internal colonization, as was the case throughout the newly colonized area of North-west Germany. Here, the order’s monasteries organized the sale of their surpluses locally, mainly to newly founded urban settlements. In other areas – in particular, far-off towns, as in Schleswig-Holstein, for example – the Cistercian monasteries were content with producing just as much as was needed to meet their own requirements, i.e. the consumption of both the monasteries themselves and their estates. In adapting to the new situation – the transition to the Rentengrundherrschaft (see footnote 1) during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries – the monasteries set up storehouses (for threshed grain or other provisions), so-called granaries (lat. grangium; see also definition of Grangien), in order to provide collection and delivery points for their Hintersassen (copyholders, (free) tenants on a demesne) (Hauptmeyer, 1997: 351). After 1350, in the wake of the population crisis, the (re)distribution of Herrenland (the demesne, the terra indominicata) to untertänige Bauern (peasants subject to or in some way dependent on a lord, a situation originating in the villication system) first emerged in the Kingdom of Denmark in the province of Schleswig, the northernmost part of the area under investigation, and took about fifty years to accomplish throughout the entire Kingdom. It was a process that encouraged and advanced the formation of the large family farms within that kingdom (Poulsen, 2003). It appears that population growth came to a halt in the more densely populated grain-growing areas as early as the first half of the fourteenth century, a phenomenon that was also observable in some other West European countries. The reason for this seems to be obvious and has to do with the law of diminishing (marginal) returns. Because of the absence of technical innovations, comparable to those in the High Middle Ages, productivity from the additional exploitation of marginal lands reached its extensive margin and steadily increasing labour and stocking densities reached their intensive margins. As this occurred, the law of diminishing returns took more and more 3

For the sake of completeness, this development was, as mentioned above, not true for East Holstein, which, in sharp contrast, took a very different course, turning to a system of tightened subjection of the peasants, the so-called ‘second serfdom’ under the conditions of Gutsherrschaft (large-estate-based manorial system).

4

The ‘demesne’ is defined as a landed estate farmed by or under the direct control of the lord. It grew out of the Frankish villication system.

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effect, and ever more severe famines struck the region in consequence. It is reasonable to assume that, in some of the more densely populated areas, a full-blown Malthusian crisis had been developing since the beginning of the fourteenth century. When Europe was hit by the bubonic plague epidemic of 1349–1351, North-west Germany was of course not spared the resulting demographic slump either. Indeed, it is estimated that about 10 per cent of the German population (in some regions even up to 30 per cent) fell prey to bubonic plague during the three years of its first outbreak alone, and even more when the decades thereafter are taken into consideration. By the end of the fourteenth century, thus, Germany as a whole is reckoned to have experienced almost a halving of her population. Estimates for North-west Germany alone show a similar result (Wegemann, 1917). All in all, the plague brought in its wake not only devastating depopulation, but also a sustained decline in grain prices, lasting throughout Germany until the mid-fifteenth century. Of course, it may not have been the plague alone that affected the market, for increased grain imports from the Baltic region may have added to the problem. However, the late-medieval agrarian crisis had very different outcomes in the various North-west-German areas concerned. Areas relying primarily on extensive cattle husbandry either hardly suffered or were even able to benefit from the surge in demand for meat, an increase that was due to marked growth in real wages during the decades immediately after the first bubonic plague epidemic. According to Abel, annual meat consumption per capita probably amounted to more than 100 kg around 1400 (Abel, 1966: 73)5. By way of comparison, the per capita consumption level for Germany in 2003 was 84 kg, having in the meantime probably dropped to an historical low of not even 20 kg at the outset of industrialization. The late-medieval agrarian crisis therefore turned out to be rather a crisis of grain farming, as regions where animal husbandry prevailed were not or hardly affected, namely the Lower Rhine, Westphalia north of the River Lippe, the Emsland, as well as the stretches along the North Sea coast, except for that between the lower Weser and the lower Elbe. A look at socio-economic maps displaying the intensity of deserted settlements and land (Wüstungen) in Germany during the Late Middle Ages bears ample witness to this observation. The regions of South Lower Saxony and East Westphalia lost over 40 per cent of their settlements, the areas along the Hellweg 20–40 per cent, whereas the area between the lower Weser and the lower Elbe, as well as the southern part of the plain of the Lower Rhine, experienced but moderately high losses, as only 10–20 per cent of all settlements lay abandoned (Abel, 1966: 84). The figures convey an interesting finding, since not all the less deserted areas were devoted solely to animal husbandry. Apparently, as is clear from the case of the Northern Rhineland, a prosperous, central urban region could compensate more efficiently than other regions for the severe population losses due to the plague. But there were other effects. According to Hauptmeyer, the great agrarian depression set in motion a positive change in the legal status of the peasantry, particularly in severely hit grain-growing regions that, additionally, had to satisfy a high, local grain demand from towns. In the course of the crisis, these regions 5

See also, but critically: ‘Nutrition’, in G. Melville and M. Staub (eds), Enzyklopädie des Mittelalters, Darmstadt, 2008.

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therefore adjusted to the need to bump up the production of food, above all grain; hence, it was not only the more favourable Meierrecht (see footnote 2) that gained increasingly wider acceptance, but also other leasehold relationships free of personal bondage and servitude subject to Herrenrechte (seigniorial rights) (Hauptmeyer, 1997: 355; Reinicke, 1989). Or, put otherwise, it appeared to be only economic pressure – i.e. the need to ensure a sufficient grain supply for the urban population – that brought about an enhanced personal freedom for the peasantry. Whereas the sixteenth century saw a price revolution that triggered a quadrupling of the nominal grain price level on average throughout Germany, the seventeenth started with a severe price slump. During the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), however, a soaring grain-price boom again took hold, only to be followed by a sustained decline in grain prices during the second half of the seventeenth century. From the 1690s on, prices stabilized, even showing a weak upward trend until around the mid-eighteenth century (Abel, 1966). However, despite general similarities in corresponding price movements, there had been differences, as secular price series for the city of Cologne and Schleswig-Holstein reveal. Whereas the great seventeenth-century depression found expression in clear price movements in Schleswig-Holstein, it resulted in stagnating prices in Cologne (von Arnim, 1957: 12; Rahlf, 1996: 115). Another point concerns demographic factors and their undeniably strong impact on long-term agricultural price developments throughout the period under investigation, as a comparison between the price trends of grain or staple food and those of livestock products or industrial goods may demonstrates. During periods of longterm population growth, such as that from the late fifteenth to the early seventeenth century and that of the entire eighteenth century, the price of grain increased significantly more steeply than that of livestock products and of industrial goods. Here, too, however, there are differences to be found, and very important ones. With respect to the extent to which the entire European market, and not regional demand alone, determined both price development and structural changes in agriculture, the coastal regions of Schleswig-Holstein and the Low Countries showed very similar results. In contrast, even an economic centre as international as Cologne tried to obtain staple food primarily from local or nearby regional markets and to resort to alternative (i.e. international) supply channels via Amsterdam instead, only if there was no other way out. The same held true in reverse, i.e. in the case of marketable surpluses.6 But this settled way of trading did not prevent Cologne traders from engaging early on in the European grain trade either, as middlemen, to sell on grain from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean, or to import grain from the Baltic region to the Upper Rhine via the Netherlands. Indeed, it was the active role played by big Cologne merchants in using their good connections in the European grain trade that helped Cologne to lay in sufficient reserves and be relatively well prepared for times of bad harvest, as well as 6

Cologne‘s meat supplies, however, proved more dependent on long-distance trade. Fattened bullocks were driven on a grand scale from Jutland to Cologne and the Netherlands via Hamburg (Gijsbers, 1999).

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thereby to be better able to curb prices in such years than economically weaker regions (Kellenbenz, 1975: 388, 417). Nonetheless, it is true that there was no such occupation as corn chandler or corn merchant in Germany, not even at the beginning of the Early Modern Period. Merchants traded in a variety of goods (of which grain was but one item), taking opportunities whenever they arose. Bakers and millers were active chiefly at the local or regional level and were consequently subject to stringent market regulations (Rahlf, 1996: 50). Throughout the period under review, chiefly municipal authorities, but noticeably territorial States, too, enforced tight regulations on the grain trade, in order to avoid or alleviate food shortages, particularly after crop failures. The regulations applied above all to long-distance trade in times of need; until it was occupied by the French in 1794, even such a metropolis as Cologne had to comply with them, regardless of how crucial the economic sector concerned might have been, which, in the case of the grain trade, meant nothing else than cutting an economic lifeline. Admittedly, even though grain trade regulations were less strictly enforced in the eighteenth century, the town council of Cologne, seeking in 1771 to cope with soaring grain prices, felt obliged to order a house-to-house search in order to unearth concealed grain stocks and, in 1789, imposed a ban on grain exports (Gramulla, 1975: 458–462; Pohl 1975: 74–78). As will be shown in more detail later, among all the areas of North-west Germany, only the coastal marshlands had to a large degree been shaped by exterior trade in their agricultural development: those on the North Sea coast from the Middle Ages and those on the Baltic coast of Schleswig-Holstein from the Early Modern Period. From the outset, it was the changes in relative prices on the main sales markets of the Low Countries that determined which economic branch was to dominate (von Arnim, 1957; Poulsen, 2003). The choice lay between bullock fattening, grain (particularly wheat and barley) growing and dairy farming (Meiereiwirtschaft) based on the export of butter and cheese. Of these options, bullock fattening was selected, as it was only the price of bullocks, among the prices for animal production, that could bear comparison with the price of grain. Although grain prices showed an even slightly steeper increase than bullock prices, these last were in fact subject to less fluctuation, so that bullock fattening became the most prosperous branch of farming business in the sixteenth century. That said, grain farming was likewise able to expand strongly in the marshlands of the North Sea coast in particular. Altogether, the sixteenth century is regarded as the ‘Golden Age’ of Schleswig-Holstein agriculture. However prosperous agriculture might have been at this time, the fact is that, in the face of sharply falling real wages, it was for landowners that the golden sun certainly shone, rather than for others. Interior colonization, be it through dyking on the North Sea coast or the clearing of forests in East Holstein, now reached its peak and there was steady growth in the population of Schleswig-Holstein, and especially that of Holstein, which increased from approximately 350 000 in 1460 to 472 000 in 1620, or by 0.19 per cent per annum. The slump in grain prices on the European market at the beginning of the seventeenth century resulted in a severe crisis of grain cropping on the west coast. Abel presumes this crisis to be one of overproduction, since cropland had been very greatly expanded in Europe as a whole, and particularly in the Baltic region. Fortunately, grain prices 269

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recovered relatively quickly, so that the general price level in agriculture was relatively high in the two decades from 1630 to 1650, although the increasing and extremely erratic fluctuations in grain prices between 1622 and 1665 reduced the commercial advantages of cereal cropping. However, the increased volatility of grain prices cannot be inferred from the local crop variations in Schleswig-Holstein. Rather, it was due to the grain exchange of Amsterdam suffering severely from the seventeenth-century agrarian crisis and thus affecting grain prices in Schleswig-Holstein – a plausible explanation, certainly, all the more so because it was only during the Second Swedish War (1657–1660) that Schleswig-Holstein suffered widespread war damage.7 The picture was different regarding livestock prices, which remained constant, thereby enabling bullock fattening – based mainly on cattle imports from Denmark – to expand and thrive. The favourable development of butter prices, too, stimulated dairy farming and thus contributed decisively to the general increase in the dairy business of the East Holstein Gutshöfe (manorial farms). Altogether, the entire livestock production branch was able markedly to strengthen its position within the agricultural production branches. When – primarily in consequence of European market developments – the great agrarian depression of the second half of the seventeenth century began in the early 1660s, it first became apparent in declining grain prices. Prices of animal products and livestock went up until around the 1670s, when they started to fall. Although there had been a major shift in relative prices in favour of animal production branches, thereby leading to an increasing proportion of animal production in total agriculture, and with prices leading to particular emphasis on dairy business, agriculture as a whole during the three decades from 1660 to 1690 suffered the worst crisis of the entire period from 1500 to 1800. Sales of cereals and livestock stagnated grievously, solely butter and cheese exports remaining relatively stable and maintaining their volumes. Numerous farms were deserted and more and more large estates and farms went bankrupt. East Holstein, where Gutshöfe (manorial farms) predominated, reacted to the crisis by tightening personal bondage so as to solve or alleviate labour shortages. On the western coast of Schleswig-Holstein, with its mainly large farms, farmhands and maidservant found themselves increasingly subjected to substantial personal restrictions, in particular being prevented from moving freely to another farm. Around the end of the seventeenth century, signs of demographic recovery appeared, the population level climbing back to 470 000 by around 1700, denoting an annual growth rate of 0.30 per cent for the 1660–1700 period, albeit that this level was still slightly below that for 1622. The trend continued after the turn of the century, population numbers for the first time exceeding the 500 000 mark, rising to about 540 000 in 1735, which for the 1700–1735 period, is equivalent to an annual rate of 0.31 per cent . In the end, it was population growth, together with the development of exports, that contributed decisively to ending the crisis and stabilizing agriculture again, if not paving the way for the post-1740 boom. Agriculture nevertheless saw major shifts in the relative importance of the different production branches. With grain prices rising more rapidly 7

The population of Schleswig-Holstein declined from 472 000 in 1622 to about 420 000 in 1660 (-0.31% p.a.).

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than livestock and dairy-product prices from the end of the seventeenth century on, grain farming expanded continuously at the expense of animal production, leading to a sharp fall in bullock exports, only butter and cheese exports maintaining their level.8 To the question of which group of agricultural producers in (the coastal areas of ) Schleswig-Holstein could benefit most from the export earnings in prospect, the answer is clear, albeit varying according to area. In East Holstein, it was the Gutsbesitzer (lord of a large manorial estate), whereas, in the areas on the west coast and in Angeln (an area in eastern Schleswig), it was the big farmers. However, untertänige Bauern (subject peasants) in the service of a Gutsherrschaft (large-estate-based manorial system, second serfdom) were hardly, if at all, able to benefit from such earnings, as they were subject to corvée in the form of Hand- und Spanndienste (unpaid manual work and animal labour) and could neither afford nor were allowed the option of using pasture land or fodder for animal husbandry. Not so with the freeholders of the marshlands, who, never being subject to Flurzwang (compulsory crop rotation), could easily and quickly adjust the balance between cropping and pasture land according to fluctuations in relative prices. Moreover, since normally the prices of grain and of animal products followed divergent trends, the peasantry of the marshlands could react relatively flexibly to crises.

9.2  The Northern Rhineland: an urbanized European heartland One field of intensive research has been the Kölner Agrarhandel (Cologne market); another, the intensification of the agriculture of the Northern Rhineland from the thirteenth century on, a process that evolved from complex urban-rural relationships. The Cologne Bight and, in part, the Lower Rhine region can be described as the only two areas where agricultural production achieved a highly intensive level close to that of Flanders. Seeking for the driving forces behind medieval and early modern agrarian development in the Northern Rhineland, research has come to the conclusion that the main agent was sustained and even growing urban demand for agricultural products, in turn necessary for deeply rooted exchange relationships to be built up between rural and urban areas; in the Northern Rhineland, indeed, such relationships had already been developed to the mature stage as early as the Middle Ages (Reinicke, 1989: 333; Becker, 1992: 99–204). Towns of all sizes sought, wherever possible, to meet their food demand locally or from within a ‘reasonable’ radius. Towns and cities of medium and large size, however, soon had to face the fact that their demand for grain exceeded the supplies available from their hinterlands. In general, the Rhineland towns were supplied by wholesalers, even though direct selling of grain, fruit and meat by peasant tenants and leaseholders undeniably played a significant role, too. But even the Pachtherren (landlords, lessors) living in the towns played their part, the rents paid in kind to them contributing substantially to the food security of the towns. As mentioned before, long-distance trade 8

Developments similar to those in Schleswig-Holstein occurred in the Oldenburg and East Friesland regions (Bölts, 1966).

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was of little consequence in normal times. In times of need, however, towns resorted to it when the securing of supplies of basic food became pressing. Quite the opposite was true for non-essential or higher-value food and beverages, such as meat and wine. In the case of wine, Cologne had already become one of the largest German centres for wine trading, developing intense ties with the wine-growing regions of the Upper Rhineland as early as the Middle Ages. The same went for higher-value meat products, the supply of which depended to a great extent on long-distance trade, as with the famous Frisian bullocks. Here again, Cologne was early to become a centre and indeed by far the largest livestock market of northern and western Germany (Reinicke, 1989: 281–285). Besides its cattle market, Cologne was also able to establish a supraregional market for pigs and sheep; there were, of course, towns in the Rhineland and Westphalia other than Cologne that established large and renowned animal markets, but these were limited to intermediary trade in Frisian bullocks (Kuske, 1949: 47–63). The situation was slightly different with grain markets. Urban grain markets, especially the larger ones, had the purpose of securing supplies for the local population, but also served to balance the differences between deficit and surplus areas in adjacent regions. Again, Cologne may offer an example to demonstrate this channel function, in that it collected the cereals from the surplus areas of the fertile left banks of the Rhine and adjacent Westphalia so as to sell them on to the deficit areas, namely the grainpoor but highly proto-industrial uplands, in particular the Bergische Land, as well as the Eifel, the Westerwald, the Siegerland and the Sauerland. Along this dividing line, a chain of relatively clearly separate local grain-trading centres emerged in the High Middle Ages, a few prominent examples being Neuss for the Bergische Land, Düren for the Eifel, and Aachen for the highly commercial valley of the Maas (Reinicke, 1989: 262–264; Kuske, 1949: 27–34). An unusual, but characteristic, feature of agrarian development in the Northern Rhineland was the widespread practice of granting a Zeitpacht (fixed-term lease) for an entire farm, which was quite unusual for Northwest Germany. Since its first appearance in high medieval times, leasehold tenure had increasingly interfered with manorial relationships, which, after conflict-laden arguments and quarrels, either eventually developed into pure Rentengrundherrschaft (see footnote 1) or even led to its disappearance. During the period under investigation, leaseholds were concentrated in the areas with fertile loess soils that first made intensive high-yielding agriculture profitable and gained central importance in the supply of grain to both the towns in the Rhineland and the adjoining, strongly proto-industrial uplands. Those areas were, more particularly, the Cologne Bight, the Jülich-Zülpicher Boerde, as well as the Hellweg in the adjacent Westphalia, between the Rivers Lippe and Ruhr (which was later to become the Ruhr area), and the adjoining Soester Boerde. But there is another point to notice, one that is crucial in respect of agricultural intensification. In the densely populated areas of the Rhineland of the High Middle Ages, there was no further scope for land clearance. There, consequently, farming systems and techniques involving clearly greater labour intensity than elsewhere had to be developed and implemented instead, so as to secure the food supply.

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The transition from the manorial to the leasehold system became apparent in the Rhinleand in the twelfth century and, as already mentioned, was connected with the dissolution of the large Herren- or Fronhöfe (lord’s manor or demesne, curtis dominica) (Reinicke, 1989: 324–334; Becker, 1992). The underlying reasons were twofold. For one thing, it became increasingly difficult to maintain the serf status in the environs of towns and urban settlements, for serfs could evade compulsory services on the demesne estates at any time and flee to the numerous towns in the vicinity in order to gain their freedom; hence the well-known motto Stadtluft macht frei (town air makes you free). Thus, a main source of relatively cheap compulsory labour ran dry, and with it lapsed a crucial precondition for tolerably profitable large-estate farming under the conditions of pre-industrial agriculture. Without the corvée, highly intensive crop cultivation under pre-modern economic conditions could achieve maximum efficiency only with a free peasantry engaged full-time in farming, a reason why, in the Middle Ages, there was intense motivation for large landed estates such as ecclesiastical estates to be split up into several single farms and to be rented to peasants under various systems of land tenancy (Binswanger et al., 1995; Kopsidis, 2006: 136–197). By 1400, the Zeitpacht had become the predominant institutional framework in agriculture for granting land use rights in the Northern Rhineland, both hereditary leasehold and manorial farms had become far less evident. Moreover, there was a transition towards extended leasehold terms ranging from six to twenty-four years, the forms of this varying greatly from region to region. Along the Lower Rhine, for example, there was the so-called Drei-Leiberpacht (a three-generation leasehold tenure) (Henn, 1975: 176), which was equivalent to the English ‘copyhold tenure for three lives’. Predominating initially was the Halbpacht, whereby cost and benefits were shared equally by the lessee (the tenant) and the lessor (the landlord), but a switch began to take place in the fifteenth century to the Fixpacht (fixed-rent lease), the rent being paid mostly in kind and particularly in grain. The sort of grain in and the extent of these payments varied considerably and depended on the requirements of the urban economy: for example, barley accounted for a higher share where brewing was a major activity, as in the case of the Hellweg and in the Soester Boerde (Reinicke, 1989: 330). According to development economics, provided the agricultural economic situation was favourable, it was the Fixpacht that provided the strongest incentive for the lessee to look to increasing yields, because the additional profits were granted solely to him and not to the lessor.9 In negotiating leasehold contracts, the landlord’s intention was to work out his room for manoeuvre between the obligations of and the freedoms or grants accorded to the peasant tenant, so as to achieve sustained growth of yields and returns from his farms. By virtue of their contracts, therefore, tenants were allowed to raise specialized 9

Furthermore, it seems that, in bad times, the lessee was always allowed to suspend rent payments, even more so as financially strong tenants were eagerly sought after and a change of lessee involved too much bother. Leasehold contracts regularly included clauses that granted the lessee protection against indebtedness due to a bad harvest, war damage and fire (Reinicke, 1989: 328).

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crops or to combine animal husbandry with grain farming. The same held true for the leasing of additional land, which never posed a problem. One of the speciality crops mentioned in these leasing contracts, and whose cultivation was indeed fostered by them, was woad. Its importance, especially for the urban economy, grew from its use for dyeing in the textile industry until sometime in the seventeenth century. The fact that it was also exported to the Netherlands may have underpinned its relative significance in those times. The trading and exporting of woad were organized in the same way as for grain, i.e. either a larger dealer bought up the harvest or the tenant farmers sold their produce directly themselves, without any middleman. The urban economy was also the cause of the increasing popularity of the cultivation of the hop (another specialized crop), more particularly as a response to the rising consumption of beer by urban populations (Reinicke, 1989: 332–333). In the course of time, hereditary leasehold became an established fact. The reasons behind this development lay, firstly, in the extended term of the lease and, secondly, in the fact that financially strong lessees were much in demand. The efforts of the Landesherrschaft (higher territorial authority) to augment the Bauernschutz (protection of the peasantry) additionally advanced this process, the protective measures being to cushion the devastating effects of both the Thirty Years War and the severe agrarian depression of c. 1660–1690. The measures also included the right of continuance for over-indebted (peasant) leaseholds granted by the higher territorial authority. This particular measure was anything but benevolent, being designed as a strong incentive for the peasantry to remain in the rural area concerned and thus continue to be liable to pay the very high dues (taxes and charges) imposed by the territorial authority, dues that were very much higher than the manorial dues (including services), which were relatively low. To round off this picture, it may be helpful to note that, in the Duchy of Cleves around 1685, the countryside’s share of the tax burden was 70 per cent, as compared to a share of only 30 per cent for the towns (von Arnim, 1975: 180). Altogether, in the course of time, the property rights of leasehold farmers or the so-called Halven (tenants, operating a tenant farm on a share-cropping basis, paying rent in kind amounting to half of the harvest; cf. Halbpacht above) were strengthened and enhanced, especially in the case of those families that had been living on their farms for generations, a situation whereby it became ever more difficult and finally almost impossible actually to end leasehold relationships and evict leaseholders. The strong demand for financially strong lessees certainly served to enhance leaseholders’ rights in respect of their farms. That the system could end up so favourable to the peasant lies in the fact that, in sharp contrast to the situation in England since the end of the seventeenth century, there was no effective mortgage market to which landowners could turn to obtain relatively cheap loans and no longer have to rely on their tenants for capital. In this way, early-modern agricultural development in the Northern Rhineland to a large extent paralleled that in England from about 1450 to 1700, i.e. agrarian progress in a highly commercialized economy was dependent with regard to both its direction and pace on competitive peasant tenants aiming in economic terms at yields over the long term. However, there is a difference that is nothing less than pivotal. Whereas English 274



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‘yeomen’ (farmers who owned land in freehold, leasehold or copyhold) were increasingly forced to leave their holdings from the end of the seventeenth century onwards, tenant farmers in the Rhineland were able continually to benefit from strengthened and enhanced property rights. Protected and fostered in this way, the peasantry ultimately became a relatively homogeneous group in terms of class and property; both personally free and operating autonomously, they were classified according only to the size and liabilities of and duties pertaining to their properties (Henn, 1973: 177). According to Aubin, indeed, it was these relatively wealthy peasants that led the way in agricultural progress, in the sense that the Northern Rhineland became permanently one of the most dynamically developing and high-yielding agricultural regions in the entire German territory throughout the long centuries from the Middle Ages to the First World War (Aubin, 1922: 135). Historical research has concentrated a great deal on the landed property of the urban bourgeois, showing undeniably that, from a low baseline level, this expanded rapidly between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. However, reliable records of that time may contradict this and suggest that the focus be shifted. Indeed, the 1699 Landbeschreibung (a detailed and comprehensive survey of a whole region, recording the names, inhabitants, economic activities, etc. of all kinds of settlement) of the Archdiocese of Cologne supports this view, given the relative shares of landed property ownership: just 6 per cent in the hands of the urban bourgeois, but respectively 38, 25 and 31 per cent in peasant, noble and ecclesiastical or electoral hands respectively (Reinicke, 1989: 299). It was thus the peasantry that actually held the lion’s share of landed property and not the widely investigated bourgeois class.10 The trend towards property ownership on the part of peasants emerged as early as the sixteenth century, when rich peasant tenants and leaseholders started increasingly to buy their holdings. This trend could continue well into the eighteenth century, yet was pushed when the Halven (see definition above) could to a great extent convert the surpluses from favourable agricultural economic developments not only into money but, what is more, reap the full benefits without filling the landlord’s purse (Bosch, 1920: 87–89). It follows from this, that, all in all, complex urban-rural relationships – both economic and non-economic – in the Northern Rhineland of medieval and modern times indeed did not lead to a weak and hopelessly debt-ridden peasantry being forcibly exploited by a capitalist urban bourgeoisie that felt free to do so just as it liked and, moreover, compelled that peasantry to tread the risky path of accelerated agrarian development. In fact, it was the peasants engaged full-time in agriculture that were prepared to embrace market-induced agricultural development as soon as market conditions proved favourable in the Northern Rhineland of the High Middle Ages – a historical-structural feature that holds true for agriculture throughout North-west Germany. 10

Within a close radius of c. 10 km around towns, however, the share of farmland held by the urban bourgeois could be substantial; in some cases, up to 50% of the total (Becker 1992: 358).

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9.3 Varied agricultural trade, despite high transport costs: the interior of North-west Germany between the River Lippe and the North Sea coast According to the geographer Wilhelm Müller-Wille, a small-scale von Thünen ‘Isolated State’, with its well-defined rings of agricultural activity, had existed in Greater Westphalia – defined as the region between the Lower Rhine and the fens and moors of the coastal transition zone – since the High Middle Ages (Müller-Wille, 1952: 222–233). However, this early ‘Isolated State’ differed significantly from that arising from the process of industrialization, as it did not have a particularly broad and lasting impact on agriculture (Kopsidis, 2012). The product volumes destined for supraregional trade were very low when measured against total agricultural production, let alone the trading volumes of certain adjoining regions. Inland waterways aside, the emphasis of overland trade was on especially non-essential and high-value-added food and other products, as well as on those with a relatively low unit freight cost, such as hides, wool, ham, alcoholic beverages and live animals. Affordable long-distance trade requires a certain degree of infrastructure. but the infrastructure was very poor throughout most of the North-west-German Plain, making trading difficult. Because of poorly developed navigable waterways and the lack of made-up roads, agricultural produce had to be transported on wagons over tracks across the fields and meadows or, in the case of live animals – bullocks, sheep or pigs – driven along drove roads and across open pasture land. Passage along these overland routes was a major problem during bad weather, especially during the wet seasons of spring and autumn, so that agricultural trade was hindered or even blocked for substantial distances and long periods. Working within the von Thünen model, taking account of these unfavourable external conditions may contribute towards an understanding of the pattern of agricultural production, namely the very low spatial expansion of especially the more intensive (von Thünen) production belts specializing in grain, and their main area of occurrence on the Hellweg between the Rivers Lippe and Ruhr, the adjoining Boerde areas, along the Upper Weser and the area around Hildesheim and Braunschweig in south-eastern Lower Saxony. Beyond was another very different belt twenty to thirty times greater (author’s own estimate, based on Müller-Wille, 1952: 222–233). Within this all-encircling outer ring, extensive animal husbandry at first prevailed; later, from the Early Modern Period onwards, flax and hemp growing increasingly extended the production range. In spite of all the numerous trading relationships, by far the larger part of the agricultural production of the interior of North-west Germany remained within local bounds, if not within the farm or holding itself. As distinct from the situation in the ensuing period, the volume of longer-distance trade consistently failed to reach a level whereby its share in total agricultural production would have induced either an area-wide intensification of animal husbandry or a cropping system more sophisticated than the three-field system. As late as 1830, cropping systems which were less intensive than the often cited three-field crop rotation were still being used on more than 60 per cent of the area under cultivation in the Prussian province of Westphalia 276



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(Kopsidis, 2014). It comes as no surprise then that, over the whole period under review, the rural population placed special emphasis on self-sufficiency in basic foodstuffs, because this was of vital importance for food security. Nonetheless, it would be misleading to characterize this situation as autarky in the narrower sense, for, whenever peasants had a chance to generate income without jeopardizing their self-sufficiency, they jumped at it, behaviour that was clearly approved of or welcomed by the landlords themselves, especially in the face of these latter’s ever increasing need of money. Moreover, the strong demographic growth of the sixteenth century is likely to have been accompanied by an economic upturn which – especially in view of the rapidly increasing number of sub-peasant classes – might have been reflected in significantly higher (food) market activities at the local level. Unfortunately, this assumption lacks supporting evidence, as there is still a considerable gap in research into the issue of the commercialization of rural society in North-west Germany before the eighteenth century (see also Chapter 10, North-west Germany 1750–2000). A proper division of labour between contiguous regions became observable here and there during the Early Modern Period, occurring in barren, thorough-going proto-industrial areas, as well as neighbouring highly fertile Boerde areas with grain cropping. However, grain export figures for the early nineteenth century suggest that, before 1750, approximately more than three quarters of grain production was for own consumption, even in the pronouncedly grain-exporting areas of Westphalia. In the Early Middle Ages, the Westphalian region exported almost exclusively the produce of extensive animal husbandry into particularly the Rhine valley as far as Mainz, to Flanders and, to a less extent, to the Lower Elbe and the coast of the Baltic Sea. The produce included ham and flax from the Westphalian Bight, and wool, wax and honey from the North-German Geest areas. Grain exports showed a different pattern, the only grain-producing area able to export its produce being the Weser region, as only here were the logistic requirements met: more particularly, the monastic estates provided an infrastructure effective enough to deliver the produce to Bremen via the Weser (Hill, 2004); indeed, it was these trade relations that could have led to the early Vergetreidung (cerealization) in the Weser Uplands (Müller-Wille, 1952: 223). Later, driven by the prosperity of Westphalian towns and centres of trade, commerce and manufacturing – with Dortmund and Soest at their heart – the Hellweg became one of the economic heartlands of the Germany of the High Middle Ages, a heartland and growth region that, besides both urban commerce and Europe-wide trade in finished goods of iron and steel, could draw on an agriculture so productive that it was able continuously to produce surpluses – particularly of rye – over the longer term. In this way, the Hellweg began increasingly to compete with the Weser Uplands, finally taking over as the leading grain-farming belt. Surprisingly, although the Boerde soils would have been the appropriate soil to grow wheat on, it was rye that prevailed on the Hellweg. The explanation is simply that, in Westphalia, wheat was regarded as a luxury rather than an essential product (Kuske, 1949: 29). The new urban centres of the Hellweg, which boasted simultaneously high levels of supply and demand, actively shaped Westphalian region’s system of both local and long-distance trade in agricultural produce. The Südergebirge (Southern Westphalian 277

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Uplands) provided the Hellweg towns with timber for building and firewood, and animal produce came from the little developed marsh- and wetlands of the lowlands and plains of Westphalia. According to Müller-Wille, this particular structure was the first successful attempt at creating a fairly uniformly commercialized Westphalian agricultural landscape taking in both the Lower Rhine and the Cologne Bight, and linked, what is more, with the (von Thünen) production belts for wood, grain and animals via north-south transport axes (Müller-Wille, 1952: 224–225). No later than the sixteenth century, however, the prosperous Hellweg towns were caught up in a long-drawn-out crisis that lasted until about the beginning of the eighteenth. Towns as prosperous as Dortmund sank to the level of so-called Ackerbürgerstädte (farming towns) and the Hellweg and its economy went through a process of profound re-agrarization. A different picture, however, was offered by the adjacent Southern Westphalian Uplands (the Sauerland and the Siegerland), which, as a result of the area’s rising iron and metal-processing proto-industry, as well as the mining there, developed into the centre with the highest total grain demand in Westphalia.11 The deflection of the Hellweg grain export trade from Cologne towards the Sauerland led to a string of new small towns being developed along the edge of the Sauerland foothills as new grain trade centres, primarily to channel grain surpluses from the Hellweg to deficit areas. Beginning in the Middle Ages, this system of market towns matured to full development in the seventeenth century, one of them – Herdecke – rising to become one of the principal grain trading venues in Germany around 1800. Paving the way to and underpinning this rise was the granting of ever more market and staple rights by the ruler of the territory (Landesherr), as was the case in the County of Mark, with its widespread proto-industrial commerce. A grain-trade policy so actively pursued, even if within mercantilist regulations, also meant the waiving of excise duties imposed at local, municipal government level on grain imports (Brakensiek, 1991: 361–362; Kuske, 1949: 27–34; Müller-Wille, 1952: 225–229; Bosch, 1920: 134–146; Lampp, 1912). Additionally, the increasing proportion of the population working in manufacturing and proto-industry in the Southern Westphalian Uplands stimulated demand to such an extent that brewing became established in the neighbouring towns of Paderborn and Lippstadt. During the eighteenth century the (von Thünen) belt of extensive livestock farming in the central, eastern and northern regions of Westphalia, with the exception of the Kernmünsterland, in general sold its products to the coastal areas, the Low Countries or the Hanoverian Geest rather than to the Southern Westphalian Uplands. Those products consisted of meat, hide and wool. The regions of Paderborner Land and Ostsauerland (East Sauerland) placed the emphasis on sheep rearing, and had been selling their (processed) products – mutton and wool – as far the Rhineland and the Low Countries since the fourteenth century. Later, particularly in the wake of the 11

The Southern Westphalian Uplands had been areas of grain shortage as early as the Late Middle Ages. The rising proto-industrial textile centres around Tecklenburg, Osnabrück and Ravensberg also suffered shortages at an early stage (Kuske, 1949: 29–30).

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devastating Thirty Years War and with proto-industrial textile manufacturing steadily expanding, agriculture had to adapt to changing needs and demands, which led to an increasing cultivation of flax and hemp in the North-west-German regions of the North-west-European linen belt: parts of the Münsterland, the entire Weser Uplands and parts of East Lower Saxony. Until the Early Modern Period, the nearby coastal Geest, representing the third von Thünen belt, continued to produce wool and honey for export to the two, more or less natural markets of the Rhine and the coast; in the sixteenth century, grain-spirit products were added to these exports. For practical reasons, merchants from Münster and Osnabrück, who in fact organized the trade, founded the so-called Marktflecken (villages endowed with the right to hold markets, but with no other urban privileges), so as to provide at least a few delivery points for the peasants of these sparsely urbanized areas. One last point is that, until the Early Modern Period, the moor- and fenlands between the coastal region and Westphalia had been largely considered as waste land and thus as unimportant for production; used only minimally for agriculture, they were rather an intermediate stretch of land separating the two economic regions, the only connecting element being trade in live animals (Müller-Wille, 1952: 228–233; Kuske, 1949: 44). Although cattle raising was the basis of all livestock farming in North-west Germany, this was not the case in the stretch of land between the Rivers Rhine and Weser. There, it was the pig that predominated, both in respect of home-produced supplies of meat for home consumption and as regards meat exports. From early times, pigs had been raised there in an absolutely natural environment – almost a paradise – where numerous large oak woods and groves provided their basic diet and remained the focus of pig raising, even in the early modern centres of intensive grain production, such as the Hellweg. That is why the hog or domestic pig was generally considered a forest animal. In the eighteenth century, the episcopal administration of Münster was still keeping a register of the oaks on the holdings of its Hörigen (villeins) so as to determine their fattening capacity. In the fifteenth century, moreover, it was quite natural for town chronicles to mention details of the acorn harvest, besides exchange rates and bacon and grain prices. Virtually all forms of modern meat processing were known in medieval Westphalia. Instead of necessary vegetable oils, which were unavailable or as yet unknown, various animal fats were used. Among the meat products, ham was undisputedly paramount, followed by – just to name a few at random – bacon, smoked meat, salt pork, all sorts of aspic and jelly, liver and Mettwurst (smoked pork sausages), cured pork chops, trotters, and suckling pig, After all, it was not by accident that a chimney-hood full of hams was called a Westphälischer Himmel (Westphalian heaven). Whereas Westphalia ham was sold internationally as a higher-value product, trade in other pig meat products was more oriented towards the left side of the Weser. In general, Westphalian trade was focused on supplying coastal towns with salt pork as provisions for seafarers, Central- and East-German destinations being unimportant in this respect, as they were primarily the focus of Lower Saxony trading activities. But there is more to notice about trade directions: whereas cattle on the hoof, for example, travelled from north to south, Westphalian pig products went in the reverse direction, providing the coastal marshlands with piglets, pigs and, above all, ham. But livestock farming served more 279

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Illustration 9.2  Harvest of acorns for pig fattening, c. ­1510–1520, ­illustration for the month November in the Breviarium Grimani, miniature

than these primary food-producing purposes, since its ‘waste’ products – hides, for instance – offered profitable commercial options when considered as valuable secondary raw materials. Indeed, Greater Westphalia was able to market all sorts of hide, selling to the leather manufacturers of the towns in the Rhineland and the Netherlands that produced for supra-local or foreign demand and that relied on Greater Westphalia for this necessary raw material (Kuske, 1949: 54–60). 280



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9.4 Free peasants as cattle breeders and traders: the North Sea coastal and river marshlands Among the regional agricultural economies of the territory under review, the marshlands of the North Sea coast were alone in evolving, as early as the Middle Ages, a system that is best described as mainly commercially oriented towards far-distant export markets. Distinctive as this economic feature was, so was the agrarian system on which the economy was grounded. Because of the absence or, rather, the very late spread of the manorial system, a system of peasant self-organization formed and was able to become firmly established. The self-organized peasant bodies not only created self-governing communities, but also arranged the sale of their own products in an only sparsely urbanized area. In other words, the North-west-German agrarian region most highly commercialized and exhibiting the greatest dependence of a whole rural economy on long-distance trade conducted since the Middle Ages provides evidence that strict rural market orientation need not be the result of measures imposed by lords seeking to increase money rents or by urban-bourgeois early-capitalist elites. In fact, it indicates that this kind of market orientation arises from the sheer existence of a receptive sales market, even if there is no such market in the vicinity. Around 1000, the marshlands of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein saw the first attempts at land reclamation, which were accompanied by the emergence of new settlements there. A more systematic approach to internal colonization set in only about hundred years later, around 1100, but this time accompanied by not only settlement, but also sophisticated techniques of land reclamation, i.e. land was wrested from the North Sea through the building of dykes and the establishment of drainage. This internal colonization was undertaken by the population of the Altsiedelgebiete (old area of settlement) of the Geest, together with Flemings, Hollanders and Frisians, all of them from the area of today’s Low Countries. The colonization was initially organized predominantly by the nobility and only marginally through co-operative effort; however, the balance slowly began to shift in favour of the latter, at least in the marshlands of the North Sea coast and rivers. Because the creation of dykes and drainage could be accomplished only if the task was understood and undertaken collectively, the colonization fostered strong and tight co-operative bonds and hence resulted in a profoundly co-operative society that had only little, if any, room for the nobility. Internal colonization, therefore, partially led to the assimilation (in the river marshlands of Lower Saxony) or displacement (in the Dithmarschen district of Schleswig-Holstein) of the ‘early colonization nobility’. Indeed, that nobility in the Elbe marshlands of Schleswig-Holstein retreated eastward towards the Slavic areas recently integrated into the Holy Roman Empire, with the result that former Slavic areas such as East Holstein, Mecklenburg and Pomerania became a concentration area and stronghold of the nobility, subsequently to become notorious for its severe and oppressive forms of Leibeigenschaft (serfdom) under the system of Gutsherrschaft (large-estate-based manorial system). In Ostfriesland, however, society took a different course. Here, the nobility were never able either to form an influential group or co-exist with the leading peasants. Wherever the nobility were displaced in the wake 281

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of colonization, one of two forms of peasant society organization took shape: either a co-operative peasantry, as in the Stedingen area (Oldenburg, Weser marshland), or a peasantry ordered according to the lineage of their descendants, as in the Dithmarschen district (Schleswig-Holstein). In the end, even in these areas, feudalism was able to spread and take hold again. Stedingen, for example, was overmastered and more or less ‘re-’integrated into the feudal system in the thirteenth century, The same happened to Dithmarschen, though only in 1559. In the long run, thus, the Ostfriesland Häuptlingsherrschaften (chiefdoms) ultimately failed to resist feudalism, these territories, too, eventually being incorporated into feudal dominions, albeit that the manorial system remained only poorly developed in them. Although the medieval peasant societies of the North Sea coast had been organized co-operatively, they are by no means to be seen as radically egalitarian societies – indeed, that would be misleading. Large peasants, mostly from the early generations of settlers, exerted real control over their sphere of influence – both rural society and the rural economy – and that meant ruling over the sub-peasantry and smallholders. Turning to the conditions of agriculture itself, the size of farms needed to be no smaller than a certain minimum if they were to survive in the long run, because the heavy clay soils, although highly fertile, required appropriate equipment to be worked, i.e. large teams of draught animals to plough them. Size, thus, was a necessary economic precondition. Of course, this alone might not have been the reason for the comparatively large size of farms in this region, for – on the one hand – specializing in grassland farming would also have fostered larger holdings and – on the other – only a wealthy peasant was likely to build up adequate reserves to be able to respond to the extreme challenges that nature could throw up: flooding, in particular. The agriculture of the marshlands may have been highly profitable, but it was also very capital-intensive, and indeed was so at every single stage, from cultivation to sale. Hence, it required the operation of a credit market. Initially, capital for the large farmers was provided by burghers (medieval urban citizens with vested rights); later, from about the mid-sixteenth century on, increasingly by the nobility. Importantly, however, the peasants did not suffer any debt-induced ‘overwhelming’ by the nobility (Poulsen, 1990). Economically, in fact, they proved to be rather versatile and flexible. It was they that, beginning in the Late Middle Ages, took the initiative in building up an export-oriented cattle and grain economy, and traded on their own account with the Netherlands, Livonia, and later increasingly with England. This enabled them little by little to amass sufficient wealth to allow them the lifestyle of a nobleman. During the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, moreover, there was a sweeping wave of town foundation aimed at effectively channelling the booming agricultural exports of the marshlands. This clearly shows that, on the North Sea coast of Schleswig-Holstein, it was agrarian export-oriented production that induced town foundation and not the reverse (Hammel-Kiesow and Pelc, 2003: 130–134); suffice it to mention within this context the rise of Husum on the west coast of Schleswig in the fifteenth century. The advantages of peasant freedom to build up an export-oriented livestock economy is easily understood when it is remembered that the early modern peasants of Schleswig-Holstein, beyond the areas of the Gutsherrschaft, were absolutely 282



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free to trade as they liked, whether or not on their own account, whereas those of other regions – for instance, East Holstein and other parts of the Danish Empire, or Oldenburg (Lower Saxony) – were subject to massive seigniorial interference in their cattle trading: for example, where there were pre-emption rights at set prices (Wiese, 1966: 9; Enemark, 2003). Trade with live animals in the North-west-German area, Denmark and the Netherlands had been widespread and buoyant since the mid-fifteenth century to a degree that regional specialization developed, particularly in respect of rearing and fattening (Enemark, 1983). In the trade in live animals, it was cattle that dominated: large surpluses were produced in the coastal countries and there was high demand in the Rhineland and parts of Westphalia. As already indicated, Frisian bullocks were very much appreciated and considered a high-quality product, even as early as the Middle Ages. All in all, the agro-economic landscape was shaped by region-related specializations. Whereas the coastal regions of the Netherlands concentrated their efforts on dairy farming, the German marshlands placed the emphasis on meat-oriented extensive animal husbandry, even though there had been widespread cheese production before the seventeenth century, especially on the peninsula of Eiderstedt and in the Wilstermarsch (Schleswig-Holstein). A further example of labour division is seen in the animal fattening ‘production chain’ at that time, in which store and feeder cattle were each kept in clearly separated areas, both functional and geographical. The first link in this production chain was Denmark, the principal region for rearing store cattle. Moving along in the chain, the subsequent first fattening took place in the coastal and river marshlands of the west coast of Schleswig-Holstein. From there, the cattle were driven overland to the far-flung rich pasture of the river marshlands along the Rivers Lippe, Ruhr and Lower Rhine, where they recovered from the exhausting journey and were further fattened up. After gaining enough weight, they resumed their ‘processing route’, being driven overland to the Cologne cattle market (as already mentioned, by far the largest of its kind in North-west Germany), to the Spanish Netherlands or to the Central German Uplands. In all this, a dense network of cattle markets, larger and smaller, was set up throughout the North-west-German area to channel trade from cattle suppliers to consumers. Intermediary trade to the Rhineland passed in large part through the Westphalian cattle markets, of which Münster was the largest and most renowned – so much renowned, indeed, that referring to a Münsterer (otherwise a man from Münster) actually meant talking about a bullock trader. In fact, North-west Germany boasted a dense network of cattle markets and likewise – unsurprisingly – of drove roads, too. There is also evidence of considerable shipments of bullocks to the Netherlands and England, and, for the sake of completeness, there were of course exchange relationships with northern destinations, as well: for example, piglets from the Münsterland went to Ostfriesland and foals were exported from Oldenburg (Lower Saxony). Apart from these ‘commodity flows’, lastly, there were also incidental flows of human traffic, seasonal workers from northern Westphalia pouring into Friesland and Holland at each hay harvest (Kuske, 1949: 50–54; Wiese, 1966; Enemark, 1983; Gijsbers, 1999). 283

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Illustration 9.3  Cattle market and market court, 1497, from a manuscript with the municipal law of Hamburg, miniature

The production chain thus bore undoubted witness to the commercial activities and capabilities of that time and area, but quantitative information is lacking. A few estimates nevertheless exist for the volume of the medieval and early modern cattle trade. Ostfriesland, for instance, is reckoned to have had as many cattle as inhabitants at the end of the thirteenth century (Kuske, 1949: 51). Concrete figures are available, too, for parts of the Kingdom of Denmark; these indicate that, in the late fifteenth 284



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century, Skåne (now the southernmost province of South Sweden), Schleswig and the area of present-day Denmark were exporting approximately 20 000 head of cattle annually; that number rose to a maximum of about 55 000–60 000 head by the beginning of the seventeenth century and then fell again to 20 000–30 000 head in the eighteenth (Wiese, 1966: 78; see also Poulsen in this volume). The relatively low numbers for the eighteenth century might suggest a general decline of agriculture, but in fact indicate a structural change that coincided with a booming grain market and thriving dairy farming.

9.5 ‘Part-subsistence’ rather than ‘whole house’: nutrition between autarky and market Otto Brunner’s (1898–1982) concept of the Ganzes Haus (whole house, oikos) was widely accepted by the older historiography. In accordance with the concept, peasants and nobles operating their farms and demesnes (Eigenwirtschaft) managed their houses as closed economies not related to or influenced by markets; in a nutshell, they were divorced from the ‘outer world’. Their households were, thus, self-contained economic units, supporting – through self-sufficiency alone – the entire household of nuclear family, kin and farm servants. The large peasants’ Hofwirtschaften (closed farm economies) of North-west Germany were considered prototypes of this concept; from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period, indeed, self-sufficiency played a far greater role in ensuring food security among all social classes than during both the run-up to industrialization and industrialization itself. More recent research, however, has dismissed this concept, and instead has described the economy of farm households at that time as only partially self-sufficient, because this conveys a more comprehensive picture of peasant behaviour (Troßbach 1993: 64–70, 88–101). Consequently, as already shown in detail, large peasant farms fell in with market demands as long as the basic conditions were met, i.e. that markets were accessible and that soils were appropriate to produce what was required to satisfy the market. In early modern North-west Germany, moreover, both the rapidly growing strata of sub-peasants with little land and urban households were failing to secure their food supply through self-sufficiency. In addition, the picture of a peasantry leading a self-sufficient existence within the confines of the Ganze Haus is fading and is no longer valid – all the more so since the peasant classes and the nobility had already started in the Early Middle Ages to seek increased money income. However, there is no denying the fact that staple food remained an issue for the household economy, especially in respect of such a staple as grain, which was both bulky and difficult to transport and, what is more, subject to incalculable price and harvest risks, and to the attendant conditions of tiny and therefore erratic markets. In such a situation, the autarkic household economy was of vital importance, ensuring food security through sources of supply as close as possible to the household, including extensive farm- or household-linked storage capacity to cushion the effect of short-term fluctuations. This was not the case with the more highly valued food 285

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items such as wine, beef and very often beer, which definitely did not count as all-out luxuries and, as indicated above, had been transported on a grand scale and over long distances in North-west Germany since the Late Middle Ages. Indeed, beer and wine were consumed in abundance, as if they were water (albeit the healthier kind), even though they probably became widespread and popular among the lower classes relatively late in this period. Nevertheless, the high demand for these alcoholic beverages points to the standard of living of large sections of the population having improved since the Early Middle Ages. Another item of food worth noting is fish, whose importance in the diet should not be underestimated, especially because of the periods of fasting that marked medieval life. But fish was more than an adjunct to a healthy diet, since fishing was an economically fruitful occupation. Considerable imports from the regions of the Baltic Sea (herring, cod) and the North Sea (plaice, cod, lamprey, skate and ray), as well as fish harvests from inland waters (eel, salmon), played an anything but marginal role in earning an income (monetary or otherwise) for the peasant and sub-peasant classes. On the whole, however, nutrition standards for all but the well-off were rather unbalanced and lacking in essentials. For this reason, all degrees of undernourishment and malnutrition appeared to be an everyday phenomenon, omnipresent and normal. The North-west-German diet was based above all on rye and oats, the staple food per se. To make the situation worse, the general shortage of these foods was compounded by the naturally fluctuating seasonal availability of grain during the year, which led to increased mortality rates, especially towards late winter (Hauptmeyer, 1997: 367). The different consequences for the individual peasant classes are reflected in statistical data. Empirical studies for the period after 1750 indicate that, in North Westphalia, nuptiality among sub-peasants – who, in fact, were dependent on additional grain purchases – correlated negatively with grain prices, whereas the reverse was true among full peasants. This pattern, which is supposed to have already emerged in North-west Germany in the Early Modern Period, also reveals that the harvesting result significantly influenced not only the standard of living, but also its fluctuations, which were extremely short-term as compared with those of industrialized societies, a result that is in line with the model of Ernest Labrousse to explain a crisis of the Ancien Régime type. Although many questions on the issue of medieval and early modern nutrition in North-west Germany are still to be resolved, one thing is clear: grain played a much greater role in nutrition than it does today; as already mentioned, it made up a considerable part of the medieval diet. For daily meals, it was consumed as gruel, porridge and bread. Gruel was widespread in its consumption and, particularly for the rural population, was more important than bread, because of the amount of energy that went into bread making and – for that time – the rather sophisticated ingredients and technical facilities required, i.e. mills to make flour and ovens for baking. Oats, buckwheat and barley were the preferred grains for all the diverse sorts of gruel, groats and porridge, whereas rye served for both gruel and bread, and was increasingly consumed in the form of the latter. Presumably, the consumption of rye bread had already been introduced to the peasant diet by the time the agrarian recovery got 286



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underway in the High Middle Ages, albeit without completely replacing the consumption of gruel and the like. On the whole, gruel still seems to have prevailed among especially the rapidly growing rural lower strata and smallholders (Wiegelmann and Mohrmann, 1996). However, the above-mentioned sophisticated requirements could be ignored by adopting a ‘leaner’ approach to making bread, which meant baking plain flat bread rather than more elaborate forms: for one thing, hand mills permitted affordable flour to be produced in the household itself; for another, flat bread could be converted into gruel or mush whenever necessary. Regarding class-related patterns of consumption, it is assumed that all urban classes ate significantly more bread than the rural population. Yet figures for the actual amount of bread consumed appear to have little reliability, because the reported German values for annual per capita consumption show considerable variation, ranging from about 100 kg to 500 kg. Even the value of 200 kg frequently set as a standard in historical writing is likely to be a clear underestimation (Rahlf, 1996: 31–38); this assumption is supported by the available per capita bread consumption figures for a Mittelpfründe (medium prebend) of the St. Magdalene Hospital of Münster, which amounted to between 275 kg and 343 kg in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Krug-Richter, 1991: 83). Water, milk, wine and beer represented the usual daily drink. Wine and beer – almost integral to trade from the High Middle Ages on – were transported in great quantity over long distances. As for regional differences, wine probably prevailed in the Rhineland and beer in the rest of North-west Germany. Beer – commercially produced, traded and dispensed – became vitally important as regards the administration of supply and taxation by the authorities (State, municipal and guild regulations). There is documentary evidence that, as early as the tenth century, the brewing of beer was subject to the Banngerechtigkeit (exclusive privileges on the production and trading of a crafted product: in other words, a local monopoly on production and distribution) of the Ottonian kings and emperors, as well as of the manorial lords; later, the towns themselves imposed similar, detailed municipal regulations on brewing; indeed, the renowned Ratskeller12 were built for the dispensing of beer under this strict licence (Kuske, 1949: 35–46). Similar regulations applied to wine. The brewing of beer has undergone many developments over the centuries and it is therefore not surprising that many sorts of beer have seen the light of day. The oldest sort of beer was the so-called Grutbier, which was brewed from various herbs and went off rapidly. At least as early as the twelfth century, hop beer then appeared as a commercial brew, since it proved cheaper and less perishable, a fact that certainly advanced its spread and ensured that it finally became prevalent by the end of the sixteenth century. Among the centres of commercial brewing in North-west Germany during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Bremen and Hamburg were paramount, exporting beer to as far as Westphalia. For these two Hanse towns, indeed, beer brewing was a matter of of high priority, so much so that one of their prime concerns was to establish 12

A Ratskeller is a restaurant or tavern often owned or leased out by the municipality and located in the cellar of the town hall.

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grain-trading relationships with the interior, in order to secure sufficient supplies to meet the demand for malting barley. As time went by, the beer-brewing map changed and towards the end of the Middle Ages, towns in East Westphalia and the Hellweg were heading the list of commercial brewing centres. Yet another sort of beer is worth mentioning, the so-called Keutbier (a light beer brewed mostly from wheat), which probably emerged in Holland during the Late Middle Ages and made its way to the Rhineland, where it was able to gain a foothold. Nowadays, it is seen as prototype of the top-fermented Altbier, a (dark) lager beer, which – in this characteristic consistency – is brewed only in the Rhineland and not in other parts of Germany (Irsigler 1996; Unger, 2004). Paramount among the producers of beer and wine were the monasteries, with their numerous, well-run breweries and wineries. Even though the grape was cultivated as far north as the Weserbergland (Weser Uplands) in the Middle Ages, Westphalian monasteries or convents owned vineyards and wine-growing farms or estates situated at suitable sites further south – as along the Middle Rhine, for example. The necessary adjunct to this was wine trading, which, in fact, was already fully developed in Northwest Germany in the Late Middle Ages; its centre was at Cologne, from where wine was distributed overland up to Bremen. 13 Over time, the market in Cologne gained constantly in importance, eventually – in the sixteenth century – taking second place after Bordeaux in the list of North-west-European wine-trading centres, with annual sales volume of 60 000–100 000 hectolitres (Kellenbenz, 1975: 372). Being such a central market place, Cologne was a place where many people could make a living from trading wine; indeed, between 700 and 800 families are assumed to have been doing so, becoming so well-off that they were counted among the wealthiest burghers of the city. Cologne merchants purchased large parts of the vintages directly in the wine-growing villages of the Upper Rhine and then put them into storage in Cologne so as to secure a constant supply for both the town itself and various other markets in and, above all, beyond North-west Germany, where the wine was to be sold. The large amounts of wine for external trade traditionally went to the Baltic region, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and England (Gramulla, 1975: 464–465). The consumption of spirits, next, was documented in Westphalian cities from as early as the fifteenth century. At first, spirits were seen as medicine and used only to cure human and animal (equine and bovine) ailments. Initially, distilling was an urban trade, presumably with pharmacists as the first distillers, but, from the late sixteenth century on, it slowly spread into the countryside. Unlike the alcoholic beverages mentioned above, coffee and cocoa were introduced to the area as a whole relatively late. They are documented as being regularly available commodities from overseas for the North-west-German coastal regions in the second half of the seventeenth century. Coffee, in particular, was quickly accepted and appreciated across the country and was being drunk in small Westphalian towns as early as the beginning of the eighteenth century. Despite, or perhaps because of, this 13

Wine imports from France and even further south reached Northwest Germany via coastal towns.

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Illustration 9.4  Drinkers, 1524, woodcut, title page of Johann von ­Schwarzenberg, Vonn zutrincken Laster unnd myssbrauch dye schendlichen ­darauss Erfolgen, Damit jetz dye gantz Teutsch Nation befleckt ist, Zwickaw, 1524

successful start, it was early on subject to regulation on the part of the authorities, in order to hinder the lower classes from drinking what was considered a status symbol. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, these class-related or – better – classinduced restrictions on the consumption of coffee by the rural population and poorer classes could no longer be enforced, and the Bishop of Münster for one had thus in 1785 to repeal them. 289

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Bibliography Abel, W. (1966) ‘Agrarkrisen und Agrarkonjunktur. Eine Geschichte der Land- und Ernährungswirtschaft Mitteleuropas seit dem hohen Mittelalter, Hamburg and Berlin’. Arnim, V. von (1957) Krisen und Konjunkturen der Landwirtschaft in Schleswig-Holstein vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert, Neumünster. Aubin, H. (1922) ‘Das rheinische Wirtschaftsleben: Agrargeschichte’, in Gesellschaft für rheinische Geschichtskunde (ed.), Geschichte des Rheinlandes von der ältesten Zeit bis zur Gegenwart, vol. 2, pp. 115–148. Becker, N. (1992) Das Land am unteren Niederrhein. Untersuchungen zur Verfassungs-, Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte des ländlichen Raumes vom Hohen Mittelalter bis zur Frühen Neuzeit (1100 – 1600), Cologne. Binswanger, H.P., Deininger, K. and Feder, G. (1995) ‘Power, distortions, revolt and reform in agricultural land relations’, in J. Behrman and Z.N. Srinavan (eds), Handbook of Development Economics, vol. IIIB, Amsterdam, pp. 2659–2772. Bölts, J. (1966) ‘Die Rindviehhaltung im oldenburgisch-ostfriesischen Raum vom Ausgang des 16. Jahrhunderts bis zum Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in F. Lütge et al. (eds), Quellen und Forschungen zur Agrargeschichte, vol. XIV, Stuttgart, pp. 131–271. Bosch, M. (1920) Die wirtschaftlichen Bedingungen der Befreiung des Bauernstandes im Herzogtum Kleve und in der Grafschaft Mark im Rahmen der Agrargeschichte Westdeutschlands, Leipzig. Brakensiek, S. (1991) Agrarreform und ländliche Gesellschaft. Die Privatisierung der Marken in Nordwestdeutschland 1750–1850, Paderborn. Enemark, P. (1983) ‘Oksehandelens historie ca. 1300–1700’, in A. Pedersen et al. (eds), Sortbroget kvæg, Esbjerg, pp. 9–87. Enemark, P. (2003) Dansk Oksehandel 1450–1550. Fra efterårsmarkeder til forårsdrivning, 2 vols., Århus. Gijsbers, W. (1999) Kapitale ossen. De internationale handel in slachtvee in NoordwestEuropa (1300–1750), Hilversum. Grewe, K. (2000) ‘Water Technology in Medieval Germany’, in: Squatriti, P. (ed.), Working with Water in Medieval Europa, Leiden. Gramulla, S. (1975) ‘Wirtschaftsgeschichte Kölns im 17. Jahrhundert’, in H. Kellenbenz (ed.), Zwei Jahrtausende Kölner Wirtschaft, vol. 1, Köln, pp. 429–517. Hammel-Kiesow, R. and Pelc, O. (2003) ‘Landesausbau, Territorialherrschaft, Produktion und Handel im hohen und späten Mittelalter (12.-16. Jhd.)’, in U. Lange (ed.), Geschichte Schleswig-Holsteins. Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, Neumünster, pp. 59–152. Hauptmeyer, C.-H. (1997) ‘Leitlinien der Wirtschaftsgeschichte Niedersachsen 1000–1500’, in H.-J. Gerhard, H.-J. (ed.), Struktur und Dimension. FS für Karl Heinrich Kaufhold zum 65. Geburtstag, vol.1, Stuttgart, pp. 347–171. Henn, V. (1973) ‘Zur Lage der rheinischen Landwirtschaft im 16. bis 18. Jahrhundert’, Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie, 21, pp. 173–188. Hill, T. (2004) Die Stadt und ihr Markt. Bremens Umlands- und Außenbeziehungen im Mittelalter (12. – 15. Jahrhundert), Stuttgart. Hübner, R. (1918) A history of Germanic Private Law, Boston.

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Irsigler, F. (1996) ‘“Ind machden landen alle lant beirs voll”. Zur Diffusion des Hopfenbierkonsums im westlichen Hanseraum’, in G. Wiegelmann and R. Mohrmann (eds), Nahrung und Tischkultur im Hanseraum, Münster/New York, pp. 377–397. Kellenbenz, H. (1975) ‘Wirtschaftsgeschichte Kölns im 16. und beginnenden 17. Jahrhundert’, in H. Kellenbenz (ed.), Zwei Jahrtausende Kölner Wirtschaft, vol. 1, Köln, pp. 322–427. Kopsidis, M. (2006) Agrarentwicklung. Historische Agrarrevolutionen und Entwicklungsökonomik, Stuttgart. Kopsidis, M. (2014) ‘North-west Germany, 1750–2000’, in E.  Thoen and T. Soens (eds), Struggling with the environment. Land use and productivity, Turnhout (in press). Krug-Richter, B. (1991) ‘Alltag und fest. Nahrungsgewohnheiten im Magdalenenhospital in Münster 1558–1635’, in T. Ehlert (ed.), Haushalt und Familie in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, Sigmaringen, pp. 71–90. Kuske, B. (1949) Wirtschaftsgeschichte Westfalens in Leistung und Verflechtung mit den Nachbarländern bis zum 18. Jahrhundert, Münster. Lampp, F. (1912) Die Getreidehandelspolitik in der ehemaligen Grafschaft Mark während des 18. Jahrhunderts, Münster. Müller-Wille, W. (1952; Nachdruck 1981) Westfalen. Landschaftliche Ordnung und Bindung eines Landes, Münster. Myking, J.R., Thoma, G. and Iverson, T. (eds) (2007) Bauern zwischen Herrschaft und Genossenschaft, Trondheim. Pohl, H. et al. (1975) ‘Wirtschaftsgeschichte Kölns im 18. und beginnenden 19. Jahrhundert’, in H. Kellenbenz (ed.), Zwei Jahrtausende Kölner Wirtschaft, vol. 2, Köln, pp. 9–162 Poulsen, B. (2003) ‘Middelalderens landbrug’, in L.S. Madsen and O. Madsen (eds), Det sønderjyske landbrugs historie. Jernalder, vikingetid og middelalder, Aabenraa, pp. 375–433 and 458–715. Poulsen, B. (1990) ‘Alle myne rent. Bondekredit i 15‑1600‑tallet’, in E. Ladewig Petersen (ed.), Handel, kapital og kredit, Copenhagen, pp. 31‑59. Rahlf, T. (1996) Getreide in der Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert. Das Beispiel Köln im regionalen Vergleich, Trier. Reinicke, C. (1989) Agrarkonjunktur und technisch-organisatorische Innovationen auf dem Agrarsektor im Spiegel niederrheinischer Pachtverträge 1200–1600, Köln and Wien. Schmitz, H.-J. (1968) Faktoren der Preisbildung für Getreide und Wein in der Zeit von 800 bis 1350, Stuttgart. Troßbach, W. (1993) Bauern 1648–1806, München. Unger, R. W. (2004) Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Philadelphia. Wegemann, G. (1917) ‘Die Volkszahl Schleswig-Holsteins seit dem Mittelalter’, Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Schleswig-Holsteinische Geschichte, 47, pp. 41–67. Wiegelmann, G. and Mohrmann, R. (eds) (1996) Nahrung und Tischkultur im Hanseraum, Münster and New York. Wiese, H. (1966) ‘Der Rinderhandel im nordwesteuropäischen Küstengebiet vom 15. Jahrhundert bis zum Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in F. Lütge et al. (eds), Quellen und Forschungen zur Agrargeschichte, vol. XIV, Stuttgart, pp. 1–129.

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Illustration 10.1  Gemischtwarenhandlung (a grocery) in the ­Westphalian village Schonnebeck, 1908, photograph

10 North-west Germany, 1750–2000 Michael Kopsidis Midway through the eighteenth century, agricultural markets in North-west Germany started to expand. Except in certain coastal areas, the driving force for this was by no means integration into international markets, but rather fundamental economic and demographic changes within the region itself. North-west Germany’s exceptional agricultural growth between 1750 and 1914 was initially prompted by rising domestic food demand, mainly on locally based food markets, and further by internal market integration processes. Compared to the situation in the Low Countries and England, a broad-based, accelerated commercialization and market orientation of NorthwestGerman agriculture commenced relatively late and not before the middle of the eighteenth century. Thereafter, however, commercialization and market orientation proceeded at a much faster rate than in the regions of the North Sea area that developed earlier. Whereas the nineteenth century could be described as a time of decisive breakthroughs establishing a modern food chain, 1914–1945 was a period of acute friction, with two world wars and a crisis-ridden interwar period that, among other things, saw the rise of Nazi Germany. The only long-lasting structural change during this age of the ‘primacy of policy’ was the development of highly regulated agricultural markets. For the first time, State interference went far beyond tariff-based protectionism, and not only in Germany, although it was Nazi Germany whose all-embracing system of market regulation anticipated the variable levy system established after the Second World War by the European Economic Community (EEC) as the core of its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

10.1  Main developments and structural breaks With the pace of demographic and economic development accelerating significantly in North-west Germany during the second half of the eighteenth century, agricultural markets expanded quickly, adjusting fully to the new, more dynamic environment. For the first time, markets began to become the main institutional mechanism for the distribution of food and other agricultural products. By 1914, the fundamentals of modern, mainly market-based food chains with markets highly integrated both spatially and vertically had been established. This occurred in two phases. During the first, and accelerating after the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763, there was a general upswing of the Northwest-German rural economy that was not confined solely to proto-industry. The phase saw growing market demand, resulting mainly from the expansion of the almost landless rural classes. To satisfy that demand, highly sophisticated and strongly locally based market systems developed, the key players in this being peasants and the rural lower classes. 293

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RHINELAND

Viersen

Duisburg

Ru hr

SAUERLAND

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Düsseldorf

ine Rh

Köln

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N O R T H

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Hannover

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HARZ

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The second phase, from the 1840s on, was marked by a powerful wave of industrialization concentrated chiefly around the River Ruhr and in certain parts of the Northern Rhineland, a wave that completely changed conditions on both the demand and supply sides of Northwest-German agricultural markets. The speedy rise of an urban-industrial population, highly concentrated spatially, totally altered the food chain and led to the development of the main new features that characterized it until the beginning of the First World War. The central challenge was to bridge the gap between food consumers and producers, which was increasing in not only spatial, but also socio-economic terms. A main result of all these fundamental changes was the substantially better standard of nutrition for all sections of the population on the eve of World War I, as compared with the situation in pre-industrial times. The ‘rural’ and the subsequent ‘urban’ phase in the development of a fully fledged market economy to co-ordinate the Northwest-German food chain – with prices as the main mechanism to determine agricultural producers’ operational decisions and markets as the main distribution channel to satisfy the fundamentally changing demands of consumers – will be described in the next two chapters. In this connection, it will be demonstrated that the emergence of a vibrant, commercial, rural economy contributed to the development of effective markets, able later successfully to supply the growing industrial population during the urban phase (c. 1840–1914). In contrast to the dynamic 1770–1914 period, the ensuing period from 1914 to 1945 was one of deep agrarian crisis caused by two world wars and a collapse of (international) agricultural markets. The experience of hunger during the First and after the Second World War, together with the Great Depression, paved the way for extensive regulation of and far-reaching public intervention in German agricultural markets that went way beyond the limits of pre-1914 protectionist tariff policy. Although this was a Europe-wide trend until 1945, Germany was distinctive in differing fundamentally as regards essential features. Most importantly, while German agricultural policy between 1933 and 1939 to regulate markets served to satisfy farmers’ political demands, it also formed an essential part of a National Socialist policy of autarchy in preparation for war, which had a significant impact on agricultural marketing, as well as on consumer welfare. In respect of food supply during the Second World War, furthermore, National Socialist racial ideology deeply affected the fate of occupied Europe’s peoples. After 1945, under democratic banners, West-German agricultural policy and later the European Economic Community’s Common Agricultural Policy not only continued, but also extended the German pre-war regulation of agricultural markets strongly oriented towards the all-embracing system of Marktordnungen (market ­regulations) first introduced by the Nazi government. Concurrently, the post-war boom saw food m ­ arkets becoming saturated. After 1950, in Germany, a buyers’ ­market for food ­ultimately replaced a sellers’ market for it, thereby strengthening the consumer’s position and depressing agricultural prices. Cutting costs became essential to ­surviving on saturated, highly competitive food markets. In a West-German comparison, North-west Germany led in modernizing its food chains. The low-cost mass production of superior animal products as a main feature of Northwest-German agriculture culminated there in the rise of large, vertically integrated agro-industrial 295

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enterprises that eventually became global players in their business segment. Within this context, retailers started to assume control of the entire food chain to an extent hitherto unknown and concentration processes took on new dimensions at all levels of the food chain. Price competition, however, remained tough, even on the emerging, oligopolistic retail markets, one reason being that, in a European comparison, German consumers remained extremely price-conscious.

10.2  The commercialization of peasant agriculture, c. 1770–1840 Population growth and proto-industrialization During the period under review, North-west Germany experienced a significant acceleration in population growth, heralding a new demographic era. Until the mid1790s (1740–1795), annual growth rates averaged around 0.55–0.6 per cent; after 1815 (1815–1840), they rose to more than 1 per cent. As a result of very different regional economic-demographic dynamics, significant differences existed within North-west Germany. Whereas, by the mid-1820s, average population density had increased to 98 persons per km2 in the Northern Rhineland, it had remained at just 37 and 38 persons per km2 in Schleswig-Holstein and the Kingdom of Hanover respectively. After 1795, the demographic Ancien Régime disappeared irrevocably in North-west Germany, due mainly to a declining mortality rate over the long term (Gehrmann, 2000: 98, 113, 119, 135–170). Empirical studies on the attenuated grain price elasticity of mortality for the 1740–1860 period suggest that a part in this story was played by increasing market integration inducing agricultural growth (Küpker, 2008: 397–401; Gehrmann, 2000: 270–274). The fundamental demographic turnaround was strongly connected to structural economic changes during the last decades of the eighteenth century prior to industrialization. Those changes can be summarized as a thorough commercialization of all economic sectors, including agriculture, leading to the development of a particular system of locally based, agricultural factor, credit and sales markets during the second half of the eighteenth century in North-west Germany. An important part of the agricultural ‘commercialization’ was the expansion of the textile and metal-processing proto-industries concentrated in rural areas. Leading Northwest-German proto-industrial areas showed by far the highest population growth, already achieving annual rates of up to 1.5 per cent during the decades before 1815 (Gehrmann, 2000: 172). However, compared with the situation in most developed proto-industrial regions of the North Sea area, excepting the Northern Rhineland, parts of the South Westphalian uplands and East Westphalia, the penetration of the rural economy by proto-industry was relatively weak, even in more specialized industrious regions (Gewerbelandschaft).1 1

Notable, demographically active, demand centres outside Westphalia and the Rhineland were the Harz Mountains area, with its well-developed mining industry, the large sea ports of Hamburg and Bremen, and a few, relatively small, residential towns, such as Hanover and Brunswick.

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Most parts of the vast plains of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein had little, if any, industry and showed virtually no demographic growth. The Northwest-German textile and metal-processing rural proto-industry produced chiefly for international markets throughout Europe, as well as for both Americas: for example, linen from the Münsterland served to clothe the Caribbean slave population (Küpker, 2008: 120). In spite of this and the fact that such production for international markets made that proto-industry a part of the so-called ‘Atlantic economy’, the system of agricultural markets that emerged in North-west Germany to supply the increasing population and that served as a conduit for demand to induce agricultural growth was virtually isolated from that Atlantic economy. In fact, the bulk of agrarian market surplus was traded solely within the limits of local markets; furthermore, the highly flexible institutional framework of the Northwest-German, locally based agricultural markets was deeply rooted in ‘traditional’ peasant society. This supply system reached the limit of its capacity only during post-1840 industrialization.

Peasants on interlocked markets The strong position of peasants on agricultural markets arose from the fact that the seigneurial system in North-west Germany, the so-called Nordwestdeutsche Grundherrschaft, offered them a wide range of choices for ‘agrarian’, if not ‘economic’, individualism (Kopsidis, 2006: 284–308). Northwest-German peasants held around 90 per cent of the land in secure tenure, ‘the seigneurial system was held in check, and the territorial state supported the peasantry against encroachments from the nobility and the bourgeoisie’ (Robisheaux, 1998: 111). Most of the land was controlled by wealthy peasants with farms larger than 20 ha, who depended to a substantial degree on nonfamily labour, were able to produce substantial market surpluses and had sufficient capital of their own even to invest in non-farming activities. For example, in certain rather remote, infertile parts of North-west Germany such as northern Münsterland and the Osnabrücker Land, the majority of proto-industrial textiles were not produced by landless households, but by large peasant farmers. With long experience in managing their farms and commons relatively independently of their landlords and according to their individual interests, Northwest-German peasants reacted quickly to new market opportunities within the framework of the local economy. It is therefore not surprising that, under these favourable conditions, the agents of the accelerated commercialization process in Northwest-German agriculture after 1750 were drawn from ‘traditional’ peasant society. The peasants themselves created highly flexible, complex systems of ‘interlocked markets’ to organize the exchange of labour, food, leaseholds and loans with their labourers from the largely landless rural classes. These interlocked markets served mainly the economic interests of medium-sized to large peasant farmers. ‘Interlocked factor markets’ have been and still are widespread in the rural areas of developing economies. They can be defined as ‘the contractual tying of the terms of exchange in one market to those in other markets’ (Ellis, 1996: 156). Moreover, rural labour, lease and credit markets are ‘interlocked’ in the personal sense, too. A landowning peasant is not only the employer of his labourers, but can additionally be landlord 297

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and creditor. For the rural poor, a failure to meet obligations on one market could lead to a loss of reputation on all other markets in which they participate, leading to severe economic consequences. Interlocked markets work only when all players are personally connected and all economic transactions are embedded in close social relationships. On the one hand, under the conditions of high information and transaction costs on incomplete markets, only interlocked markets allow market transactions; on the other, they involve strict control of the life of the landless rural poor by (peasant) landowners. Indeed, although such markets improve the efficiency of economic transactions during the early stages of development, their efficiency gains are distributed rather unequally, as in fact was the case in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century rural North-west Germany. All sources reveal an advanced degree of commercialization in the relationships between players in the rural-agricultural economy of Westphalia around 1800, already long before the Prussian agrarian reforms (Kopsidis, 1996: 396–483, 2002). Three specific features can be seen as the main characteristics of Westphalian, if not NorthwestGerman, agricultural local markets. Firstly, the labour, land-leasing and credit markets, as well as the sales market for peasant agricultural products, were all closely connected; normally a peasant was simultaneously his workers’ employer, landlord, creditor and grain and wood merchant. Secondly, mutual liabilities and claims were almost always calculated in monetary terms, even if no monetary transaction had occurred. Thirdly, all markets mentioned above, except the fully flexible sales markets for grain, some other agricultural products and wood, were characterized by a specific mixture of rigid conventions and variable elements; on the one hand, the remuneration for certain operations and services remained unchanged for decades and long-term close relationships could be observed on all markets; on the other, wide variation in the determination of important contractual elements is also evident in many negotiations between peasants and their workers. The personal or family character of these economic relationships did not weaken economic pressures on farm workers, but instead allowed a more effective and complete enforcement of contracts. Even though agricultural wages remained more or less fixed until 1850, the prices farm workers had to pay for agricultural products were subject to strong fluctuation, just as those paid by the general public were. Already at the end of the eighteenth century, the price of grain sold by peasants – mostly to their own farm workers as customers – was reacting sensitively to short-term fluctuations in supply. Farm workers in general bought their grain directly from their employer, but did not enjoy any preferential sale conditions, and grain prices in this locally based rural trade were disrupted by the same severe fluctuations that affected urban markets.

Local, regional and long-distance markets Until 1830, population growth in North-west Germany was concentrated mainly among the rural poor, the number of peasants varying only marginally. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the landless rural classes had already become the majority of the population (Kopsidis, 1996: 308–310). It is clear, thus, that locally based rural markets 298



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were not only the most important distribution channel for the peasants’ agricultural market surpluses, but a major source of peasant incomes. The strong ‘rural bias’ of Northwest-German food market systems in the feeding of a growing population rested upon the fact that accelerated non-agricultural economic and demographic growth took place principally in rural areas, urbanization making no progress. Throughout the 1750–1830 period, there was no change in the urban share of the population in North-west Germany, not even in the most developed area, the Northern Rhineland; indeed, that share was especially low in leading proto-industrial regions. On the basis of the definition used by contemporary Prussian statisticians, of towns being communities of more than 2 000 persons, the urban population accounted for 20–25 per cent of the total in all Northwest-German regions between 1740 and 1840 (Gehrmann, 2000: 247). Furthermore, a large proportion of the inhabitants of many small towns –particularly the so-called Ackerbürgerstädte (farming towns) – earned their living through agriculture. Even the supply of the few large cities in the area under review –Cologne and Hamburg, for instance – depended mainly on regional sources. The considerable participation of those cities in the long-distance trade of cattle and grain since medieval times stemmed not so much from the necessity of feeding their own large populations, but from their favourable location on navigable waterways and their sophisticated, institutional organization of agricultural trade, which was managed by experienced merchants with good international relations. Before industrialization, both cities served mainly as intermediaries in the organization of food trade between deficit and surplus areas. In Cologne, the grain trade was the most important, the concentration being mainly on channelling the surpluses of the granaries on the left banks of the Rhine to the heavily proto-industrialized uplands on the opposite banks, the Bergisches Land. Hamburg, for her part, managed grain and cattle exports to England and the Netherlands, drawing in surpluses from all over Denmark, Northern Germany and Central Europe. However, by far the greater part of North-west Germany lacked reliable and continuous trading links for the long-distance exchange of bulky commodities. There were two main reasons for this. In the first place, long-distance trade depended completely on the presence of closely accessible natural waterways; apart from the coastal seas and a few semi-navigable rivers (the Ems, Weser and Elbe), these were lacking in most parts of North-west Germany. Prohibitively high transport costs were thus the factor that prevented most areas from producing for distant markets or making cost-intensive efforts in order regularly and consciously to produce large market surpluses. Secondly, until Napoleon enforced the dissolution of the German system of mini-states, German particularism was connected with a confusing system of literally hundreds of internal and external tariffs collected all over North-west Germany, internal tariffs often being collected at points on navigable waterways or at important traffic junctions (Obal, 1999: 290). Radical trade liberalization first came to Germany in the wake of the victorious French armies, when, as French satellites, all member states of the Rheinbund began after 1806 to abolish internal tariffs. Backed by her ever-increasing military might, Prussia later continued this policy and in 1818, accomplishing what Napoleon had 299

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Illustration 10.2  Grain market at Unna Kamen, Westphalen, 1871, photo taken by Fred Kaspar

started, abolished all internal tariffs, being followed in this by Hanover in 1825. The creation of a unified German customs area took a big step forward with the foundation in 1834 of the Deutsche Zollverein (German Customs Union), a move initiated by Prussia. During the following decades, most external tariffs within the area under review disappeared, and the few remaining were drastically reduced. However, it was only in 1868, after Prussia’s wars against Denmark (1864) and Austria (1866), that all of North-west Germany was incorporated into the Zollverein. Radical trade liberalization also brought about the abolition of the traditional system of the Ancien Régime’s food crisis policy towards crop failures, including strict grain-market controls and regulation, such as price ceilings and export bans by municipal and central government authorities. The period between 1820 and 1870 can thus be described as the most liberal phase of agricultural trade policy in North-west Germany. However, available empirical studies indicate that, of itself, radical trade liberalization had no significant, enduring impact on the volume of long-distance agricultural trade; such an impact came only in tandem with the substantial improvement in transport infrastructure that took place only after 1850 with the coming of railways (Kopsidis, 1996: 291–310; Obal, 1999: 269–272, 378). With the exception of very few regions, located chiefly in Schleswig-Holstein, foreign trade played only a negligible role for Northwest-German agriculture and markets, even around 1830. This is supported by the fact that it was only the few exportoriented regions that were severely affected by the international farm-overproduction and estate-speculation crisis of the 1820s, which led to a slump in grain and land prices 300



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and a wave of insolvencies of over-indebted farms and estates (Abel, 1966: 210–221). Foreign trade played virtually no role in feeding the densely populated ‘industrial west’ of the Prussian Empire (Kopsidis, 1996: 291–325) and had hardly any effect on Lower Saxony’s agriculture (Obal, 1999: 313–378). Northwest-German agricultural markets showed a mixed performance during the period from 1750 to 1840. On the one hand, there were clear signs of market inefficiency, such as continuing, erratic price volatility indicating severe problems in balancing out market disequilibria (Kopsidis, 1996: 266–395); indeed, food crises approaching fullscale famine occurred in 1771–1772 and 1816–1817 in the Rhineland and in 1830–1831 in East Westphalia (Bass, 1991). On the other hand, a significant diminishing of the grain price elasticity of mortality over the long term unquestionably proves that, despite accelerated population growth, North-west Germany finally and successfully escaped the Malthusian trap. Recent price studies confirm that, before 1850, agricultural markets in North-west Germany were highly fragmented and more or less isolated from international markets (Kopsidis, 2006: 324–362; Obal, 1999: 269–273): around 1830, no common market existed in North-west Germany or in single, large territories, such as the ‘Prussian west’ of the Rhineland and Westphalia or the Kingdom of Hanover. A second feature was the varying degree to which regions participated in supra-regional grain trade. The largest integrated market, including adjacent surplus and deficit areas, seems to have been formed by the Northern Rhineland (Bass, 1991: 129–136). Two main deficit areas that had been heavily supplied by nearby granaries since the end of the eighteenth century can be identified in Westphalia. By 1800, about one-sixth of the bread grain demand in the densely populated East-Westphalian proto-industrial textile regions around Bielefeld was being met by external supplies from the adjacent plains around Paderborn and Warburg. The proportion increased to between one-half to twothirds for the densely populated, infertile, metal-processing northern foothills of the Southern Westphalian highlands, the Niedersauerland, nearby Hagen and Iserlohn. Where those highlands met the highly fertile plain in the north between the Rivers Lippe and Ruhr, a dense string of market towns d­ eveloped during the second half of the eighteenth century to channel escalating grain surpluses to the expanding industrial areas in the adjoining highlands. (Kopsidis, 1996: 244–259; Gehrmann, 2000: 198; Müller-Wille, 1981: 225; Bass, 1991: 180). The same regional pattern can be identified for certain parts of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, as well. However, by far the largest part of North-west Germany was either completely isolated from or only slightly engaged in supra-local trade.

Food consumption Where food consumption and diet were concerned, North-west Germany followed common Western European trends. Significant changes in diet and food consumption were already in evidence in the second half of the eighteenth century (Teuteberg, 1986a: 228), i.e. during the ‘phase of intensified rural commercialization’. Moreover, innovation initially took place in rural regions with highly commercialized agriculture 301

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and widespread proto-industry. Two developments were of prime importance. In the first place were the changes that occurred in the traditional daily diet, whereby potatoes started to become the main staple food, initially of the rural lower classes, such as farm workers and smallholders; in addition the consumption of hard liquor increased. Secondly, the Western European, Early Modern Times ‘consumer revolution’ had gained momentum in North-west Germany, and had spread to all classes of rural and urban society by the end of the eighteenth century. That revolution resulted in new, imported ‘luxury goods’ such as cane sugar, tobacco, tea and coffee making their appearance. Within this context, it has to be mentioned that, in a German comparison, the cultivation of potatoes on a large scale began relatively late in North-west Germany: after 1750 in Lower Saxony, around 1800 in Westphalia and the Northern Rhineland, and later in the coastal regions of Ostfriesland and Schleswig-Holstein. Quite the opposite occurred regarding such ‘luxury goods’ as sugar, in which respect North-west Germany had led all other German regions since the seventeenth century in consumption per capita (Lorenzen-Schmidt, 2003: 381). Both developments indicate that North-west Germany seemed in general to have been a relatively prosperous German region, an assumption supported by the fact that the consumption of milk and, to a lesser extent, meat was significantly higher in cattle-rich North-west Germany than the average for Germany. Food supply and nutrition levels nevertheless exhibited large regional differences within North-west Germany. Especially in proto-industrial areas, the nutrition level among the working classes deteriorated after 1800. The simultaneous structural crises in nearly all rural industries, which reached a pitch in the decades after 1830 during the so-called ‘age of pauperism’, led to dramatic and persistent losses in real wages, which so eroded the level of nutrition that near-permanent undernourishment resulted (Bass 1991). The level of nutrition was better in purely agrarian regions, which made up the greater part of North-west Germany. This held good both for the few, fertile, easily accessible regions consciously producing market surpluses and for remote, unfertile regions with a stagnating population and virtually no infrastructure for long-distance trade. In the latter case, prohibitively high transport costs meant that, at least, demand from high-income urban regions could not divert scarce agricultural resources to serve non-local demands (Kopsidis 2006: 355–356). Old, large, commercial towns in fertile, economically active regions such as Cologne and Düsseldorf in the Northern Rhineland or seaports such as Hamburg and Bremen also exhibited relatively high demand for superior foodstuffs, a situation in which a growing middle class played an important role. In contrast, the consumption of meat remained low in both small agricultural and industrial towns (Burgholz, 1987). However, even in favoured agrarian regions and commercial cities, a solution to the problem of malnutrition came only after 1850. Throughout the period under review, household self-sufficiency, too, played an important role in achieving food security – for example, the spreading cultivation of potatoes on garden plots – though not as part of a subsistence economy or anti-market mentality, but rather to ensure against market risks and malfunctioning, incomplete markets. After 1750, the extent of the subsistence economy was determined by 302



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improvements in the functioning of markets and by real-wage development, and not vice versa. Nonetheless, household-sufficiency remained an important determinant of food supply not only for the rural but also for the urban-industrial population well into the 20th century (see contributions in Walter and Küster 2011).

10.3  Industrialization and agricultural markets, c. 1840–1914 Industrialization greatly affected food chains in North-west Germany by inducing a long-lasting ‘demand push’, unique even in comparison with the situation in other dynamic regions of nineteenth-century industrializing Europe. This ‘demand push’ caused revolutionary changes at all levels of the food chain: agriculture (Kopsidis, 2014), food processing, marketing and consumption. For North-west Germany, the entire 1840–1914 period can, in this respect, be divided into two phases. The ‘initial urban phase’ of expanding food markets, c. 1840–1880, saw the emergence of a highly integrated, common Northwest-German agricultural market, as a result of a railwaybased transport revolution; even though domestic trade multiplied, traditional, preindustrial-era food-marketing systems nevertheless continued to play an important role. During the ‘mature urban phase’, c. 1880–1914, the development of a modern type of food chain accelerated significantly and the basic structures of modern food chains, adjusted to the needs of a fully fledged industrial society, were all established.

Urbanization of the food pattern The rise of the Ruhr region and adjacent parts of the Northern Rhineland to become Europe’s largest industrial belt began to boost demand for agricultural produce in North-west Germany at a rate hitherto unknown. Along with that industrialization came a fundamental change in population structure in the Rhine-Ruhr region. A dramatic urbanization process concentrated on the Ruhr began during the 1840s and, between 1840 and 1880, the Rhineland and Westphalia experienced the sharpest increase of all Prussian provinces in the non-agricultural, urban population. During the Kaiserreich, these non-agricultural, industry-based demographic dynamics accelerated further. What is more, the ‘urbanization of the food pattern’ had a strong impact on the demand side of agricultural markets. On the eve of industrialization, according to contemporary Prussian sources, the urban population’s meat consumption per capita was probably already twice as high as the rural population’s. Distinct rural/urban differences existed in the per capita consumption of wheat and rye, as well (Kopsidis, 1996: 518, 525–526; Burgholz, 1987: 103, 107–108). After 1840, thus, a shift from a rural to an urban population was already leading to a significant increase in the per capita demand for food. During the 1850s and 1860s, however, real wages increased only modestly at best, if at all; moreover, increases were limited to skilled labour and the growing middle class concentrated in towns. In contrast, the years after 1870 saw not only urbanization, but also a general positive trend in real wages ensuring that the 303

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nineteenth-century ‘food revolution’ gained decisive momentum to reach all classes of society (Teuteberg, 1986a, 1986b). At the core of nineteenth-century Germany’s food revolution was the definitive ending of the calorie deficiency suffered by the mass of the population. Indeed, annual food consumption per capita nearly doubled between 1850–1854 and 1909–1913, from 595 kg to 918 kg (Teuteberg, 1986a: 240–241). Most importantly, the consumption of animal proteins and fats as an energy source soared, whereas, until 1913, the share of plant proteins and carbohydrates in the daily diet diminished. Between 1850–1854 and 1909–1913, the consumption of meat and especially pork climbed by 121 and 283 per cent respectively, whereas the consumption of grain and potatoes (staple foods) rose by only 37 and 68 per cent respectively. The intake of these last began definitively to decline at the beginning of the twentieth century, a trend that has continued to the present day. The consumption of high-value-added crops with a high vitamin content, such as fruit and vegetables, rose significantly (by 124 and 65 per cent respectively), but by far the greatest jump in consumption between 1850–1854 and 1909–1913 was posted in respect of sugar (744 per cent) (Teuteberg 1986a; Lesniczak, 2003: 34–74), which for the first time became used in quantity in nearly every household. Characteristic of the nineteenth-century food revolution is that it concentrated on ‘calorie maximization’ and not on balanced nutrition. In fact, except in the case of potatoes, it was rather the social status of a food that decided its dispersion. This was especially true for former luxury goods such as sugar, coffee and white bread, all of which definitely did not contribute to healthier nutrition. Moreover, an increased consumption of animal products with a higher fat content – butter and cheese, for instance – was considered a sign of a superior lifestyle. The same was true for fresh vegetables and fruit, which previously could be found more frequently only on a nobleman’s table. The only socially inferior food that found its way onto the table of all classes and changed from a poor person’s bread-substitute to an appreciated sidedish to a Sunday roast was the potato. The most important feature of the food revolution after 1850 was the ‘meat revolution’, which had far-reaching consequences for farming in North-west Germany and its markets. The tremendous increase in meat consumption, especially after 1870, can be explained only by significantly augmented consumption on the part of the working classes. Of all meats, it was cheap pork that showed by far the highest growth in consumption, as against the consumption of fatless poultry, for example, which seems to have decreased until 1913 (Nonn, 1996; Teuteberg, 1986a, 268–269). In fact, the miners and steel workers of the Ruhr definitely preferred fat meat, rich in calories. The old, monotonous ‘mush and porridge standard’ (Teuteberg, 1986b: 352) vanished definitively for all groups of the working classes. By around 1900, despite all restraints, chicory coffee, sugar and spirits had become an integral part of the lower classes’ daily diet, which had not been the case a hundred years earlier (Teuteberg, 1986b: 358). However, even though the food revolution had had a deep impact on that diet, the quantities of superior goods consumed did not reach the level for highincome consumers; secondly, surrogates had often to be used instead of the original luxury good – for example, chicory coffee instead of pure coffee, or margarine instead 304



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of butter – which led the German ethnologist Günter Wiegelmann, in respect of food, to describe the nineteenth century as, more than any century before, the ‘time of surrogates’ (Wiegelmann, 1986: 367). It has to be mentioned in this respect that, after 1870, the long-term rise in real wages expanded the scope of the lower classes to imitate the middle-class life style. That imitation culminated in a process of Verbürgerlichung (‘bourgeoisfication’) of the working classes, with not only consumption patterns, but eating habits, too, being aped. The mass circulation of middle-class cookbooks and the multitude of roast-meat dishes that were integrated into the feast-day menu of the lower urban and rural classes at this time indicate a whole new dimension of imitation (Wiegelmann, 1986: 363–370; Lesniczak, 2003: 120–292). Furthermore, recent research has shown that, in North-west Germany, unlike the situation in other German regions, modern food-innovation took place particularly rapidly and barriers to diffusion between towns and rural areas could be overcome relatively easily (Lesniczak, 2003: 351).

Transport revolution The emergence of a mass market for ‘luxury goods’ such as sugar and for superior foodstuffs such as butter and meat gave strong support to commercialization of the entire food chain. Moreover, supplying the rising urban-industrial agglomerations required a tremendous spatial extension of highly integrated market areas and a boosting of domestic trade, which could be achieved only through a transport revolution. A highly integrated Northwest-German agricultural market began to develop after the mid-1840s, and drastically falling transport costs – due mainly to the emergence railways – led to the creation of a common agricultural market embracing the entire territory of North-west Germany. The extension of the Northwest-German railway system took place rapidly and was completed after 1880 with the establishment within a short time of a dense network of local railways connected to the main lines leading to the booming food market of the Rhine-Ruhr region. The construction of paved roads, which had already started in the second half of the eighteenth century in selected areas, accelerated significantly after 1830. During the 1880s, a boom began in the construction of weather-resistant local roads to provide every village with road access and continued until the eve of World War One. The dense Northwest-German network of paved roads was a powerful adjunct to the railway system in the creation of a highly integrated Northwest-German food market. It should be mentioned that the transport revolution enabled there to be a tremendous increase in domestic agricultural trade within North-west Germany, though not in food imports to the region. The ‘demand-push’ effect of West-German industrialization on food markets led to an agricultural boom in the Northwest, the work of highly competitive, full-time family farms (Kopsidis, 2014). However, despite the significantly improving connections between the western and eastern parts of Prussia, the setting of railway tariffs for grain prevented – according to all contemporary German sources – any shipments from the East Elbian granaries to Western Germany; indeed, the 1850s and 1860s saw no large grain supplies going from the Prussian east to the west, whether 305

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by train or by ship. During the 1870s, however, Northwest-German grain production proved unable further to satisfy all domestic demand, and grain imports from overseas filled the gap (Wiedenfeld, 1909, 781–783; Hardach, 1967: 94–97, 112–115; MüllerWille, 1981: 249). The process of German unification had a significant impact on Northwest-German agriculture and its markets only through Prussia’s annexation of Schleswig-Holstein from the Kingdom of Denmark in conclusion of the war of 1864. In the annexation’s aftermath, Schleswig-Holstein’s agriculture rapidly reoriented its trade relationships from the North Sea and Denmark to the West-German industrial agglomerations (Lorenzen-Schmidt, 2003: 385).2

Production for the market In North-west Germany, industrialization ‘was paralleled by a process of ‘agriculturalization’ in the surrounding countryside’ (Moeller, 1986a: 9). A deepened regional specialization combining agriculture and industry in North-west Germany caused a ‘reagrarization’ of the rural economy in large areas. Already in the decades before 1880, agricultural market surpluses had soared in particular regions adjoining the Rhenish-Westphalian urban-industrial agglomerations and in certain parts of southern Lower Saxony, as well as in Schleswig-Holstein, which exported to the UK (Kopsidis, 1996: 244–259; Lorenzen-Schmidt, 2003: 369). After 1880, farmers all over North-west Germany boosted their market production. The question was not whether to produce for the market, but to determine the optimal mix of animal and crop ‘cash products’ to maximize profits in the long run, all the while hedging against the risks of specialization. In fact, urban markets, absorbing virtually everything the surrounding countryside produced, created favourable conditions for the marketoriented, profitable, highly complex diversification strategies of farmers (Kopsidis, 2014; Moeller, 1986a: 14–16). Throughout the period, the increasing market-orientation of Northwest-German farming was accompanied by a transition from extensive to highly intensive livestock farming and from low-yielding, extensive to high-yielding, intensive arable farming (Kopsidis, 2014). Even though, in strict contrast to the situation after 1960, farms never specialized exclusively in just a single product before 1914, a process of increasing regional specialization could be observed all over North-west Germany, which seemed to gain momentum during the 1880s. Whereas, until the 1870s, market-oriented agricultural intensification included substantial efforts to enhance bread grain output, especially of wheat (Achilles, 1978: 16–18; Hardach, 1967, 113–114; Kopsidis, 1996: 192–233), specialization accelerated thereafter in various branches of high-value-added animal farming and to a limited degree in vegetable growing, as well. 2

After the annexation of Schleswig-Holstein by Prussia in 1867, a Danish population remained in large areas of North Schleswig (which became Danish again in 1920). Thus, farmers of Danish origin, too, are included when one speaks of Northwest-German farmers. A small Danish minority still exists within Germany’s borders.

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Thanks to strong specialization in pig farming, Westphalia became the main pork supplier of the Ruhr area and was able to hold its position, even against strong competition from other parts of North-west Germany and from abroad. For its part, the Northern Rhineland diversified its pork imports by taking large quantities from Schleswig- Holstein, Oldenburg and Hanover, as well. Between 1880 and 1914, indeed, Northwest-German pig numbers exploded. All parts of North-west Germany contributed to supplying the Rhine-Ruhr region when it came to beef and dairy products and, after 1900, Northwest-German breeders started to flood the South German meat market, as well. Furthermore, high-quality Northwest-German dairy products from select grassland areas, such as the coastal marshlands, gained large shares of the Central-German and Berlin markets. Throughout North-west Germany, there were also many suitable locations for fruit and vegetable growing, as well as for market gardening, though only the Rhineland and a few small areas of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein saw strong, large-scale specialization in these branches. The boom in animal farming was firmly buttressed by the sealing-off of German meat and dairy markets after 1880 by means of tariffs and later the introduction of strict sanitary, non-tariff barriers to trade. In 1900, German markets for livestock products were completely isolated from the impact of world markets. NorthwestGerman livestock farmers from as far away as Schleswig-Holstein and the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg – both of which were virtually isolated from German markets until 1866 and had abruptly lost their British markets through a British import ban in 1876 on meat from Continental Europe – quickly replaced the Danish and Dutch in the substantial business of supplying meat and dairy products to the Rhineland and Westphalia (Nonn, 1996: 59–61, 73–75; Müller-Wille, 1981: 233–252; Achilles, 1978: 19–21; Lorenzen-Schmidt, 2003: 389–391; Mütter, 2004: 9–10). The meteoric rise of Northwest-German livestock farming cannot be explained without considering the strong market-orientation of farmers, which enabled them rapidly to take advantage of the promising new opportunities. Northwest-German farmers consciously searched for market niches within which to compete successfully against established producers from the Netherlands and Denmark, a central role in this being played by newly founded farmers’ co-operatives. A paradigm of this is the case of the remote, wholly agrarian Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, whose infrastructure was nothing but poor until the mid-1860s, with large areas being inaccessible during rainy seasons; supra-regional trade relationships existed before 1860, but only to a very limited extent. This situation changed completely with the coming of the railway in 1866 and the speedy extension of the railway infrastructure within two decades. Oldenburg’s government concentrated all its policy on developing agriculture by consciously connecting Oldenburg to the large Rhenish-Westphalian livestock markets, establishing a dense network of agricultural schools and making large efforts in land reclamation. Within two to three decades, Oldenburg became an ‘agricultural powerhouse’. However, all the manifold public measures showed such good results only because Oldenburg’s family farmers took collective action to integrate themselves into the market systems. Rural co-operatives played an important role in financing, organizing new procurement and sales markets, introducing industrial milk processing, and 307

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improving animal breeding, and were largely responsible for organizing the structural change in animal farming from extensive cattle breeding to highly intensive dairy and pig farming adjusted to the demands of urban markets for high quality. By 1914, no German territory except the principality of Waldeck in Hesse could boast a higher density of rural co-operatives. Co-operatives contributed substantially to organizing the boom in pig farming, which occurred on the basis of feed purchasing, and to integrating farmers vertically into the dairy chain to a degree hitherto unknown in Germany; indeed, it was only an advanced degree of vertical integration that guaranteed the production of high-quality dairy produce. After analysing the dairy market systematically, Oldenburg’s farmers found a market niche in top-quality butter. Faced with the problem of traditional farmers’ butter varying substantially in quality and being impossible to produce in large quantities, they solved it by setting up farmers’ dairy co-operatives, which financed the necessary investments to introduce industrial milk-processing and took great pains to ensure continuous delivery of high-quality fresh milk from their members, via a sophisticated pricing system and, later, so-called Milchkontrollvereine (milk control associations). To ensure that they received standardized high-quality dairy produce, co-operative and private dairies had to organize the entire food chain for milk products. From 1886, in the establishment of Oldenburger Butter as a brand, the marketing of butter on urban-industrial markets was organized and controlled by first the Verband Oldenburger Meiereien (Oldenburg Creameries’ Association) and later the Verband Oldenburger Molkereien (Dairy Association of Oldenburg). The organization of a highly vertically integrated ‘butter chain’ in Oldenburg was exemplary for Germany and formed the ‘model’ for other food chains to establish highly profitable brands (Mütter, 2004).

Emergence of a modern food chain After 1880, the market orientation of all classes of Northwest-German farmers took on a new dimension, because, for the first time, input such as feed and fertilisers ceased to be produced solely on the farm; the supply of these now depended on rapidly evolving international and domestic input markets. Only large imports of feed allowed there to be any expansion of pig fattening, meaning that Northwest-German pig farming was highly dependent on the world feed market. Developing for the first time, moreover, were significant sectoral linkages between agriculture and industry; on the eve of the First World War, for example, North-west Germany was exhibiting a relatively high use of fertilizers per hectare, far above the German average; additionally, a system of complex factor markets emerged to organize the extended inter-sectoral relationships, which last would not have come into existence without a dense transportation network (Mütter, 2004: 8–12; Achilles, 1978: 26; Müller-Wille, 1981: 238). It should be mentioned within this context that market-induced agrarian modernization before 1914 strengthened the competitiveness of small and medium-sized farmers (Kopsidis, 2014) and halted emigration from Northwest-German rural areas (Mütter, 2004: 23). In the short run, however, market integration had an unhealthy effect on rural lower-income 308



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groups, because health-related food, mainly protein-rich meat and dairy products, was being traded on supra-regional markets to a larger extent; it was only in the late 1890s that this effect disappeared. Northwest-German farmers’ increasing demand for external protection after 1870 cannot be interpreted as a reaction against markets in principle, as assumed by earlier historiography. Quite the opposite was true. Protection guaranteed those farmers an almost inexhaustible domestic market and they were, indeed, successful in manipulating to their own economic advantage the tariff laws introduced after 1878. For example, only very low duties were levied on such important input as Russian feed grains, whereas heavy duties were later placed on meat and dairy products. During the 1890s, moreover, farmers’ organizations successfully generated extreme political leverage to counter the pressure of ever-increasing imports of meat from overseas. In 1900, the socalled Fleischbeschaugesetz (Meat Inspection Law) as a non-trade tariff barrier virtually stopped any further imports of meat and cattle to Germany, except for very limited quotas for a few countries. Bearing in mind that proceeds from the cultivation and sale of grain represented a significant proportion of the incomes of even the smallest Northwest-German full-time farmers, the demand of Northwest-German farmers for tariffs on bread grain was not an act of economically irrational ‘blind obedience’ to the East Elbian agrarian elites, as assumed by the famous economic historian Alexander Gerschenkron. In truth, those farmers were not helpless victims of an omnipotent, anonymous process of ‘first globalization’ in the course of the ‘European grain invasion’ (Moeller, 1986a; Nonn, 1996: 72–75; Hardach, 1967). The sophisticated marketing systems of the highly commercialized pre-industrial society that was based on a mix of direct marketing, dense networks of peddler trade and weekly markets were stretched to their maximum capacity with the further spatial extension of the industrial belt’s supply area, the emergence of belts producing more specialized products and the growing dependence of all farmers on substantial off-farm input. To meet the challenge of supplying the expanding urban-industrial mass market, trade activities at all stages of the food chain had to undergo radical modernization. The age of modern, large-scale and much more strongly vertically integrated agrofood businesses got slowly under way around the mid-nineteenth century and grew significantly in strength during the Kaiserreich. Modernization of the food chain in North-west Germany began in the grain trade. With the rise of urban-industrial agglomerations came a significant increase in the number of big grain-trading centres directly involved in the international grain trade, emerging – besides Hamburg, Amsterdam and Antwerp – being Hanover, Cologne, Duisburg and, at the end of the nineteenth century, Dortmund and Essen. The new trading centres supplied mainly the newly established, large, industrial flour mills developed on the Rhine (Duisburg), in the Ruhr area (Dortmund) and at the coast (Bremen), which were highly dependent on imports of high-quality wheat from overseas. Grain imports and increasingly the entire grain trade were managed by large, internationally active grain-trading companies, which were the only ones able to invest in large elevators and secure the constant supply of standardized high-quality grains to big industrial flour mills. Despite its protectionist tariff policy, Germany became 309

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the world’s second-largest grain importer, headed only by the UK (Wiedenfeld, 1909: 770–783; Hardach, 1967: 81–83, 115; Croon, 1966: 358). Meat and cattle markets changed radically, too, after 1860. Whereas direct marketing between farmers and butchers still dominated around 1850, locally based meatmarketing structures were to be found only in small towns by the 1880s; by 1914, direct marketing was the exception even there. As a consequence, butchers changed from being cattle traders and slaughterers to being retailers of ready-prepared meat. The emergence of supra-regional German meat markets connecting specialized-animal-product belts to distant urban-industrial agglomerations was accompanied by the rise of intermediate trade – both wholesale and retail – and the introduction of centralized institutions monitored or managed by municipal authorities, such as central cattle markets and mandatory slaughterhouses. The more stages by which the meat chain was extended, the more important public control of sanitary standards became and the more it was demanded by the public. In 1868, a Prussian law recommended the foundation of mandatory slaughterhouses (Schlachthauszwang); by 1914, nine out of ten Prussian towns of more than 25 000 inhabitants had a municipal slaughterhouse. The Ruhr area saw the emergence during the 1860s of big, private, central cattle markets near to railway stations, with Dortmund and Essen coming to boast the biggest. These markets began to expand during the 1880s as regional meat production and marketing lost its commanding position and large inflows from all over North-west Germany came increasingly to dominate the business. A limited part was played by railways, too, in the expansion of the belt producing highly profitable fresh milk, although Abmelkwirtschaft (flyingherd management) based on stables in the cities and direct milk marketing was also important throughout the period (Croon, 1966; Nonn: 1996: 58–62). It should be mentioned here that one of the fiercest public discussions between 1880 and 1914 about agricultural trade concerned the alleged exploitation of farmers by the intermediary trade. That discussion had a strong anti-Semitic undertone, the finger being pointed especially at Jewish cattle traders. However, all recent research proves that, due to a highly competitive, polypolistic, market structure as regards traders and later to such farmers’ organizations as sales co-operatives, and to farmers being well aware of markets and prices via efficient semi-public information systems, no market power was exerted by traders on farmers. In this respect, contemporaries emphasized the positive contribution of railways to competition. In fact, complaints by farmers’ lobbies about a price-raising exploitative, intermediary trade served only to confuse the public and prevent discussion about the consequences of a highly protective meattrade policy for consumers – a very modern strategy (Nonn, 1996: 66–72). During the second half of the nineteenth century, revolutionary changes also took place in retail trade, which for the first time became an important link in the German food chain. Over the nineteenth century as a whole in Germany, there was an increase in the food retail trade that was disproportionately high by far in comparison with population and GDP growth, as well as with the expansion of the non-food retail trade. This upswing reached a peak after 1860 when, between then and 1890, retail shops for the first time made their appearance in small towns and villages. Weekly markets lost their leading role in supplying consumers and completely new professions and 310



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channels of distribution, as well as types of business, developed in the food trade, the most important of which were food store chains, consumer co-operatives, trading cooperative societies, department stores and specialized shops. Larger businesses in the food retail trade emerged chiefly after 1890. Their rise was connected to intensified price competition, indicating a highly competitive, food retail market. It was this period that, in the Ruhr area and the Northern Rhineland, saw the founding of many of the well-known German retail chains, such as Kaiser in Viersen, Tengelmann in Mühlheim and Hill in Hattingen, most of which grew from just a little shop.3 After 1890, there was also far above average growth in the fresh food trade: fruit, vegetables, milk and the like. The dominant players in the supply of fruit and vegetables to the Ruhr area and the Northern Rhineland were Dutch traders and farmers from especially Venlo. It was only after 1900 that farmers in the Lower Rhine area started to produce fresh vegetables for the nearby urban markets. In short, the food security of the urban-industrial agglomerations depended on not only transport infrastructure and productive agriculture, but a highly innovative trading sector as well (Spiekermann, 1999: 614–621; Croon, 1966: 361–362). The food industry in fact played an important role in North-west Germany’s industrializing economy. In many rural areas, it was the only industrial sector of note, embracing such branches as distilling, milk processing and canning. Of greater importance was the development of large, industrial, food processing enterprises near to or in urban-industrial areas, which began during the 1840s and accelerated strongly after 1870. There was also a significant contribution from the above-mentioned flour mills and sugar refineries around Cologne and Uerdingen, the margarine factories in the Lower Rhine area around Kleve and Goch, and large breweries in the Ruhr area. The industrial processing of food started in flour milling and by 1914 had spread to most other branches of the food industry (Croon, 1966: 361). Most important was the boom enjoyed by margarine, which from the beginning was designed as an industrial product for mass production, its manufacture being prompted by the shortfall in the supply of butter. By around 1913, Germany was consuming one-third of the world’s margarine production. The first margarine factory in Germany was established in 1874 by the Dutch butter traders Jurgens and Van den Berg, who established large margarine enterprises in the Kleve and Goch area to circumvent high, German protective tariffs and who also took part in founding Unilever in 1929–1930. Unilever, one of the world’s largest food conglomerates, developed out of Dutch, English and German margarine enterprises that had diversified their range of products. Another major factor in the development of the food industry was the introduction of brands. Among the innovators in this respect were the coffee producer Ludwig Roselius (1874–1943) from Bremen, who introduced the world’s first decaffeinated coffee Kaffee Hag, and August Oetker (1862–1918), who established the baking powder Backin as a brand, thereby laying the foundation for one of today’s biggest German 3

Today Kaiser and Tengelmann form Kaiser’s Tengelmann GmbH. Hill has been taken over by the Rewe Group.

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food companies in East Westphalia. The great advantage of brands was that they guaranteed the consumer a standardized high quality. Driving the combination of mass production with improvement in quality was the significant technical progress made in the food industry. The disappearance of the direct contact between food producers and consumers, and the declining role of households in the food chain caused deep anxiety among consumers about food adulteration and led to increasing consumer demand for public control of food (Ellerbrock, 1987; Teuteberg, 1986a: 229–230; Nonn, 1996: 59). Scandals involving industrial processed food were extensively reported by the newspapers and outraged the public all over Germany. After severe conflicts, however, government and industry eventually succeeded in establishing effective control mechanisms, which reassured the public. On 14 May 1879, reacting to public clamour for regulation to secure food safety, the government passed the first German food law, the Nahrungsmittelgesetz. However, the law was imprecise in central points, leaving it unclear, for example, how food adulteration was to be defined. Real progress had been made three years before in 1876 when, for the first time, food control was made the responsibility of a central authority, the so-called Kaiserliches Gesundheitsamt (KGA, Imperial Health Agency). The principal task of the KGA became the amendment of the food laws to take account of new scientific findings. Germany led in the field of food chemistry up to 1914 and there were close links between German nutritional chemists and the KGA. In 1907, furthermore, a dense network of 180, mainly municipal, food-analysis laboratories was established throughout Germany. Beside the government and scientist associations, there was also a third institutional player, the associations of German food industrialists and food traders. Characterizing the period before 1914 were deep conflicts between the food industry and scientists, who saw themselves as the advocates of consumers and worked virtually exclusively in the public sector. The conflicts were very fruitful in the sense that the food industry developed its own quality standards and in the end accepted public regulation. During the Kaiserreich, food scandals played an important part in the further development of food control and food legislation, as indeed they have done to the present day. Around 1900, the dominating matter of dispute in food legislation concerned new chemical methods of conserving food. The nutritional chemists won against the industry, forcing it to accept that new methods of chemical conservation could be allowed only after they had been confirmed as safe, and establishing mandatory labelling of food additives. Nutritional chemists were also successful in getting sanitary processing standards into place. In general, scientists and public authorities succeeded in ensuring that food quality standards improved in line with scientific progress, though it is to be noted that the food industry itself became highly active in establishing private-sector product-and-processing standards as protection against unfair competition from copied, inferior products and to avoid the loss of market share in consequence of public authority warnings arising from complaints, warnings that had more than once led to severe losses. All in all, it was the interplay between active public authorities, a highly interested public and market-oriented enterprises that induced significant progress in food safety during the years to 1914. 312



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10.4  The age of crisis, 1914–1945 During the Weimar Republic, in strict contrast to the situation under the Kaiserreich, the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) and German consumers in general for the first time started to support agricultural protectionism, in order to achieve a high degree of self-sufficiency at all costs, a radical change that can be explained only by the catastrophic experience of hunger during World War One (Gessner, 2006).

A nation on short rations All German plans for the First World War were based on the assumption of a short conflict. In 1914, thus, Germany’s food economy was in no way prepared for war; furthermore, the Allies’ naval forces had established a highly effective blockade already in August of that year. From the beginning, the German food economy was hit by two shocks: firstly the abrupt ending of essential imports and secondly the decline of domestic production, due to dwindling input and productivity. Despite its prewar protectionist policy and agricultural lobbyists’ loose talk about autarky, the Kaiserreich was the world’s largest importer of agricultural commodities and foods until the eve of the war. One third of German food came from abroad. Under the conditions of war and blockade, a decline in farm output was unavoidable. However, a miserably organized war economy in the food sector – based chiefly on improvisational ad hoc measures, without any overriding concept and aggravated by an inability to improve the provisioning system substantially over the four years of war – made the situation unbearable. Already in 1915, malnutrition was widespread. In the so-called ‘turnip winter’ of 1916/1917, official rations provided no more than 1 000 calories – half the daily minimum. During the summer of 1918, even the very low level at which production and consumption had been stabilized was endangered. Diseases connected with under-nourishment, such as rachitis (rickets) or tuberculosis, spread rapidly, especially in urban areas. Even though Germany did not experience full-scale famine, mortality increased, due to malnourishment among especially such vulnerable groups as urban lower-class school children. Unlike the situation in France and the United Kingdom, the conditions of the ‘rurally biased’ Wilhelminian class society – characterized by what was by no means economically justified, i.e. the strong political position of and highly preferential treatment given to both East Elbian Junkers and (Northwest-German) farmers – made it impossible to rein in the sacro egoismo of farmers (Wehler, 2008a: 91) in order to find a balance between the conflicting interests of consumers and agricultural producers. Any consideration given to urban consumers’ demands was interpreted as a threat to the farmers’ privileged political position; more than once, instead of seeking a compromise, agricultural lobbyists demanded that the military be used to repress the food riots that first started in 1915 and became endemic in the following years, preparing the way for the outbreak of the German November Revolution in 1918. In reaction to this, all urban classes – politically, normally extremely divided – united against the ‘countryside’. It was, in fact, the social democratic labour unions that, in 1916, against 313

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all their political principles, demanded a ‘food dictatorship’, with the administration of the food economy to be transferred from civil authorities servile to agricultural interests to the army, which still showed the most understanding of the desperate situation urban consumers were in. The demand was rejected. Although the old rural elites could not prevent the urban-industrial classes gaining in power in the course of the war, they managed to obstruct a timely and consistent implementation of a controlled food economy adjusted to the needs of a total war. The American historian Robert G. Moeller speaks of a ‘poorly controlled controlled economy’ being in place for the first two years of the war (Moeller, 1986a: 44). The piecemeal and slow implementation of a controlled food economy allowed German farmers to circumvent regulations easily. Initial efforts at regulation, including price maxima, were concentrated solely on bread grains and potatoes. The changes in relative prices led only to an increased feeding of vital staple foods to animals, which resulted in the Große Schweinemord (great pig slaughter) being ordered in the spring of 1915. However, the effectiveness of such inadequate stop-gap measures suffered in turn from their poor execution. The frictions inherent in a cumbersome and tardy administration handicapped the functioning of ad hoc, improvised regulatory authorities. At all levels, large swathes of the administration were servile to agrarian interests and saw themselves as the extension of lobbyists. Worst of all, Landräte (district authorities), as the most important executive arm at village level, sabotaged the implementation of the war economy in the food sector wherever possible. Even in 1917, it was possible for 300 000 head of cattle and one million pigs to ‘disappear without a trace after being purchased by the official meat distribution agency in the Rhineland’ (Moeller, 1986a: 51). After the country narrowly escaped a food disaster in the winter of 1915–1916, a more comprehensive price policy and a stricter control system was established with the foundation of the Kriegsernährungsamt (KrEA, War Food Office) in May 1916 to co-ordinate food policy at national level. However, its effectiveness was limited by the fact that ‘it was never equipped with the thorough-going and comprehensive authorities, let alone the personnel’ (Moeller, 1989b: 149); in addition, a strong influence was exerted on it by farmers’ lobbying organizations. As a consequence of the inadequacy of the public food administration system, the black market flourished during the last two years of the war, with 30–50 per cent of all available food in Germany being traded on it. A vicious cycle was created, a booming black market further hamstringing public supply and a weak system of public food administration leading to a further rise in black-marketeering. In the end, the public food administration authorities surrendered and more or less left impoverished urban consumers to the mercy of the black market, on which Northwest-German farmers, especially those from the Rhineland and Westphalia near to urban-industrial agglomerations, enjoyed a dominance that enabled them to squeeze consumers as they liked (Theine, 1991: 100). Farmers cynically argued that as long as they could find urban consumers able to afford the prices on the black market, the food situation could not be critical. The failure of the system of public food administration contributed powerfully to the deligitimization of the Kaiserreich; throughout the war, indeed, food market regulation remained the most 314



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controversial issue of domestic policy, seriously threatening the coherence of the home front (Wehler, 2008a: 57–64, 87–93; Moeller, 1986 and 1986b; Offner, 1989: 21–78).

Briefly Roaring Twenties After the war, under the conditions imposed by a continuing blockade and to prevent a revolution, it remained essential that the controlled food economy be perpetuated and tightened, albeit that this encountered fierce resistance from farmers. Furthermore, the political consensus to conduct a policy of hyperinflation in order to cope with the high costs consequent on the lost war made it impossible to have recourse to imports to meet the shortfall in the German grain supply. It was thus not until October 1923 that, with the relaxation from 1920 onwards and the ending of hyperinflation, the controlled food economy was finally abolished. One reason for the decision to stabilize the German currency in the autumn of 1923 was that hyperinflation had led to barter trade and an increased hoarding of important food commodities on farms, to the point that a severe food crisis threatened. Even though farmers benefited from hyperinflation through the ease with which they could amortize all their debt, the disruptive impact of the continuance of the controlled food economy, as well as the sustained climate of economic instability and uncertainty, coupled with the unpredictability of not only prices, made it difficult to continue working a farm. Recent research results strongly indicate that the high investments made in farming during the years of inflation should be interpreted as a ‘flight out of the mark’, rather than a sign of economic recovery. From an economic perspective, the Goldenen Zwanziger (Roaring Twenties) were confined in Germany to the boom years 1924–1928. The upswing in the industrial economy, together with increasing real wages, caused a significant rise in the demand for high-value-added agricultural products such as meat, vegetables, eggs and dairy produce. That boom in the domestic demand for food created favourable conditions for especially Northwest-German farmers to resume the specialization processes aborted in 1914 that were designed to bump up productivity and income. Those farmers completely ignored their own lobby organizations, which, in a panic reaction, warned their members that to intensify their farming would be a road to certain ‘economic suicide’; rather, as an adequate reaction to the global agricultural crisis of the 1920s, they should wait for complete protection from world markets. Westphalian farmers nevertheless successfully managed to raise their incomes significantly between 1924 and 1928. Contributing to that success were, besides substantial cost reductions on the farm, a careful adjustment of production to changes in relative prices and striking reductions in procurement and marketing costs; this enabled reductions in real farm income in Westphalia to be limited as agricultural prices plummeted in the course of the world economic crisis, though there is evidence that, within (North-west) Germany, Westphalian farmers fared rather well (Theine, 1991; Kopsidis, 2014). In fact, Northwest-German regions can be identified whose market-oriented farmers suffered severely from the world agricultural crisis and the Great Depression. A striking example is Schleswig-Holstein, whose rural areas very early became strongholds of the National Socialists. Until now, there have been no adequate comparative studies to 315

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explain the very different impact from region to region of the world economic crisis on German agriculture during the 1920s. The example of Schleswig-Holstein indicates that an absence of market orientation on the part of farmers was not necessarily the reason for agriculture’s decline. It could be assumed, rather, that an important role was played by regional differences in the degree of farmers’ indebtedness before the crisis. High indebtedness made farms more vulnerable to falls in prices. Bearing in mind that, in 1928, debt per hectare in Schleswig-Holstein was approximately six to eight times higher than in Westphalia, it becomes clear why sales of foreclosed farms soared there in 1926 and again in 1928, but remained consistently low in Westphalia (Theine, 1991: 88, 97; Lorenzen-Schmidt, 2000: 18–19). It seems that, even in a Northwest-German comparison, the extent of the involvement of farmers from Schleswig-Holstein in the market system was extraordinary, also indicating this being the fact that failures of farms took place especially in regions where farmers had started to specialize in just a single product and had abandoned the risk-minimizing strategy of mixed farming that dominated in Westphalia. Even if Northwest-German farmers – in strict contrast to the large grain producers from East Elbia – did not close their eyes to the demands of market-induced structural change, the accumulation of crises during the 1920s, which after 1928, during the Great Depression, culminated in a slump in agricultural prices, made it increasingly difficult for a growing number of farmers to survive depending only on individual economic strategies. After 1929, furthermore, government efforts to protect and subsidize agriculture were heavily concentrated on the grain farmers of the large estates of East Elbia, because of the privileged political position of the Junkers there. German grain farmers’ prices could thus to a large extent be isolated from global price trends, whereas Northwest-German livestock farmers were exposed to the full price shock. As a consequence, the political radicalization of North-west Germany’s farmers – who were already undemocratic in outlook – made great progress during the Great Depression, the main winner in Protestant areas being Hitler and his National Socialist Party (Wehler, 2008a: 274–283, 331–342; Moeller, 1986b; Theine, 1991).

The Nazi food economy Besides its importance in terms of German politics, 1933 also marked a turning point in German agricultural policy that had strong repercussions after 1945, too. Although protectionism had already started to take a significantly radical turn during the final years of the Weimar Republic, Nazi agricultural policy took protectionism far beyond the limits of conventional State interventionism, not only protecting the domestic market, but also regulating the entire food economy according to Nazi racial ideology and political objectives. In stark contrast to that pursued by the Weimar Republic, Nazi agricultural policy was not only an accumulation of ad hoc measures, but was also highly co-ordinated. In Nazi Germany, according to the requirements of a völkische (racial) ‘blood and soil’ ideology, German farmers had to be protected at all cost from the ‘destructive’ influence of the liberal transnational market economy. However, the war-geared 316



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economic policy demanded a clear subordination of agriculture to the needs of rapid rearmament; whenever a conflict arose between, on the one hand, the objectives of the ‘blood and soil’ ideology or the demands of agriculture, and, on the other, the objectives of rearmament and the needs of industry, Hitler came down firmly in favour of the latter. The ultimate aim of agricultural policy in the preparations for war was to achieve so-called ‘Nahrungsfreiheit’ (food independence), i.e. to attain such a degree of self-sufficiency that the threat of a blockade could never restrict Germany’s freedom of action in either peacetime or war. The Nazis took the view that the poor system for controlling agriculture and of food rationing during the First World War was an important reason for the German defeat. In the war they were preparing for, the Nazis wanted at all cost to prevent a collapse of the home front through insufficient food supplies. This demanded complete control of agriculture through the organization of an extensive food bureaucracy, even before the war started, and all the more so in the face of Hitler’s categorical refusal of any demands for rises in food prices. The organization of a completely regulated food economy got under way in 1933 with the very rapid implementation in that year of the so-called Gleichschaltung (forcible-co-ordination) of all agrarian associations and self-governing bodies, and the commencement of the compulsory cartelization of the entire food economy. New in this was not the actual setting-up of cartels, but their not being set up according to tasks (production, processing, trade) and their not being limited to one or two stages of the food chain. With differentiation being for the first time solely on the basis of comprehensive product groups, the complete food chain (including agricultural production, processing and trade) was put under the direction of a single centrally controlled organization, whereby an unprecedented and very high degree of vertical integration was achieved. Formally, these cartels developed from existing professional associations, but they were definitely not autonomous professional organizations. All the various organizations to regulate foreign trade and the domestic market, as well as to organize the food chain vertically and horizontally, were combined into the so-called Reichsnährstand (RNS – Reich Nutrition Estate), founded in April 1933. By 1935, the new system of the Marktordnung des Reichsnährstandes (market organization of the RNS), based on the compulsory membership of all players in the food economy and on the Führerprinzip (leader principle), was largely in place. All farmers, processors and traders, as well as legal bodies that in the broadest sense had to do with the food economy, were incorporated into the RNS, which by 1939 had 17 million members. About 10 000 officials and 20 000 clerks were employed at the RNS, many of them in the Reichshauptabteilung III (central department ‘The Market’). The RNS had far-reaching penal power over its members that included the imposition of not only substantial monetary fines, but also long prison sentences, as well as power to expropriate the property of people deemed ‘incapable’. Furthermore, it totally regulated production, sales, prices and margins, detailed control being exercised over especially these two last. Direct marketing was substantially reduced through a complex control system and even domestic trade became strictly organized and monitored. In the food economy, only very limited entrepreneurial freedom was permitted. The high cost of regulating the market and developing a public storage 317

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system was financed mainly by compulsory fees levied on the members of the RNS. Even though the RNS had far-reaching coercive power, price policy, a sophisticated system of subsidies and public purchases were used to stimulate farm production. The policy of simultaneously having both relatively high producer prices to increase farm incomes and low consumer prices could be realized only by holding down the margins of food processors and traders, who were thus subject to extraordinarily high RNS fees and were the chief source of finance for the entire Nazi system of regulation. Up to mid-1934, the RNS functioned badly, but improved its performance significantly thereafter. Public regulation intensified substantially in 1936 with the introduction of the four-year plan to accelerate rearmament and in 1939 with the beginning of the war. By 1939, indeed, Germany’s food economy was on a full war-footing (Wehler, 2008a: 699–707, 741–747; Corni and Gies, 1997, 75–395). The so-called Erzeugungsschlachten (production battles) to raise domestic agricultural output showed some positive results, but recent research clearly indicates that the policy of rearming at the expense of public health measures, food imports and agricultural investment had a severely adverse effect on the nutrition and well-being of the population and it was precisely in the highly developed large urban-industrial agglomerations and coastal regions of North-west Germany that the policy of restricting imports of protein-rich agricultural products had its most negative impact (Baten and Wagner: 2003). In wartime conditions, however, the public food supply system – already fully developed in 1939 – worked well for the German population and contributed to the strong loyalty to the Nazi regime being maintained up to the end of the war. A food crisis was definitely not one of the reasons for the collapse of Nazi Germany in the spring of 1945. Up to the autumn of 1944, the food supply in Germany can be described only as excellent, with 2 054–2 653 calories per day as a normal ratio for the general population and 2 999–3 582 calories for soldiers of the Wehrmacht. Contrary to the situation during the First World War, German agriculture remained under strict public control and the black market played only a minor role. For members of the national-socialistic racially defined German Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community), there was a highly sophisticated food rationing system that defined 16 consumption categories according to their contribution to the war. A similar system with various categories also existed for dogs in Germany. However, the main reason for the success of the German public food system was not its perfect organization, but the fact that hunger and malnutrition were exported. It was only through the ruthless exploitation of occupied Europe’s agricultural resources that the high German nutrition ratios could be maintained. In 1942–1943, for example, reportedly around 45 per cent of German demand for grain and 42 per cent of German demand for fats and meat were either imported from occupied territories or produced by forced foreign labour; to be added to this, moreover, are the large amounts that were required to supply the millions of German soldiers. In line with National Socialist racial ideology, the most barbaric treatment was meted out to the occupied parts of the Soviet Union. Even before the war against the Soviet Union got under way, in the summer of 1941, German war planners had consciously calculated the death of dozens of millions of Soviet citizens to secure the 318



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Illustration 10.3  British military authorities distributing food to the German civilian population in Hamburg, March 1945, photo

provisioning of the Wehrmacht and high levels of food imports to the Reich. Recent research points to millions of Soviet citizens – perhaps up to 6.5 million – falling victim to under-nourishment under the German occupation (Nolte, 1999; Pohl, 2009: 199). Even in occupied Western Europe, with the exception of Denmark, the food situation remained very critical, far behind that in Germany and in certain instances reaching famine proportions, as during the Hunger Winter of 1944–1945 in the Netherlands (Corni and Gies, 1997: 397–584).

10.5 Between strict market organization and internationalization: the food chain from 1945 to 2000 Without the benefit of plundered foreign resources, and with the conditions of the separate zones of occupation in Germany preventing shortfalls being made up from areas in surplus, plus the fact of bad harvests, the German population experienced severe hunger in the first years after the war. The black market boomed. Nevertheless, bearing in mind the very critical food situation in a war-ravaged Europe and the chaotic situation in Germany, it remains to the lasting merit of the Allies that a famine was averted. It was only in 1948 that there was any movement towards a substantial 319

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improvement in the food supply and this permitted there to be a step-by-step dismantling of the administration of the controlled economy in the food sector, which had been pragmatically based on the apparatus of the former Reichsnährstand, itself dissolved by law only in January 1948. After the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in 1949, the further development of the Northwest-German food chain was shaped by two contradictory situations: first that West-German agricultural policy and subsequently the EEC Common Agricultural Policy – shaped substantially on the West-German model – to a large extent neutralized market forces in the determination of farm incomes; and second that the far-reaching structural changes begun in the 1960s substantially strengthened the power of the food industry and later the retail trade within the food chain, albeit that both the food industry and that retail trade had to operate on highly competitive national and international consumer markets. Overall, thus, the development of the Northwest-German food chain was determined by the extent to which first the food industry and later the retail trade managed to reduce inefficiencies at farm level that arose from the publicly financed preservation of an economically unviable farm structure inadequately geared to robustly increasing optimum size. It has nevertheless to be remembered that, over the long term, a highly subsidized modernization of (family) farm production contributed to soften the conflicts between an inefficient, much too small-scale farm structure and a highly competitive retail trade forced to achieve the maximum possible level of efficiency at all stages of the food chain. The pivotal role of the food industry and retail trade in the post-war development of the FRG food chain is demonstrated by the fact that, during recent decades, the FRG has advanced to become one of the world’s leading food exporters – mainly of final products –exceeded only by the Netherlands and the USA (2007–2008 figures). However, this is a reflection of the strong competitiveness and export orientation of the FRG’s food industry, not of her highly subsidized agriculture: for 1956–1957 to 1958–1959, the value of food exports was no more than 9 per cent of that of food imports, but it had risen to 80 per cent by 2007–2008. Germany is still the world’s second-largest food importer, exceeded only by the USA (2007–2008 figures).4 Moreover, the importance of the common European market for the FRG’s food economy increased significantly during the first ten years of the EEC and has risen continuously to the present day. The main focus of this chapter is in the first place to explain the continuation in WestGermany of the Nazi approach to market regulation and the massive consequences of that for the shaping of the EEC’s Common Agricultural Policy, and next to analyse the fundamental changes within the food chain that, in a West-German comparison, occurred mostly in North-west Germany and resulted in a substantial gain in power for the downstream stages at the expense of farming. 4

The share of the EEC’s founding member states in the FRG’s total foreign food trade jumped from 24.5% for 1956–1957 to 1958–1959 to 44.2% for 1967–1968 to 1968–1969. Today (2006–2008), in the European Union of twenty-seven member states, the share is 75.5%.

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Protectionism in the FRG and the EEC/EU Even though the principal guidelines of agricultural policy changed fundamentally after 1945, the radical way in which an all-embracing Marktordnung (market organization) was established in Nazi Germany had a deep impact; what remained after 1945 was the nostalgic desire of German farmers and their lobbies for an agricultural market completely disengaged from the free market economy and run by monopolistic governmental organizations (Wehler, 2008a: 707). Already in the first year of the FRG’s establishment, it was decided to reinstate the highly regulating market policy of the Reichsnährstand with its system of state-controlled prices maintained by a costly variablelevy structure and including an extensive scheme for public storage. In 1950 and 1951, Marktordnungen (market organizations) for grain, dairy products, fats and meat were introduced in the FRG, the explicit aim being to protect German agricultural producers as completely as possible from the ‘detrimental effects’ of fluctuating world market prices. This highly protectionist and, from the beginning, very expensive policy for the taxpayer and consumer was supported feverishly not only by rural-based conservative parties, agrarian lobby organizations and the food authorities, but by the large, opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD), as well. The protectionists argued frankly that German farmers were not competitive at prevailing world market prices and, hence, income support through price protection should be provided. Early critics of the reintroduction of a controlled economy in agriculture clearly saw that protectionist market regulation misused as social policy in favour of farmers would preserve unviable farm structures and thus become a lasting and growing burden on society. Despite this, the protectionist faction argued explicitly for an agricultural policy preserving that structure. The protectionists were so successful because they could build on the core belief of German society at that time, a society that, even though a large majority agreed with the principle of a soziale Marktwirtschaft (social market economy), was deeply convinced that agriculture (at least in the FRG) was very different to other economic activities and had to be taken out of the market economy to ensure the continued existence of the given farm structure based on relatively small family farms. In fact, the majority of West-Germans saw a gesunder Bauernstand (sound farmers estate) as highly important for the stability of society at large and as a value per se. Thus, not only the vivid memory of starvation, but also the unique alliance of vested, very effectively organized agricultural interests, a deeply rooted middle-and-upperclass-based conservative utopia of agrarian romanticism, hostile to the market, and a Marxist-influenced SPD that saw market organizations for agricultural products as a type of ‘organized capitalism’ and a step in the direction of a socialist economy created a situation where nearly all parties in the West-German parliament voted for the Landwirtschaftsgesetz (LG, Agricultural Act) of 1955, which, in force to this day, laid the legal foundation for all-encompassing and permanent protection of the agricultural sector and which had a deep impact on the shaping of the CAP. It was the LG that, for the first time, postulated the maintenance of farm incomes as the main objective of German agricultural policy. The German State undertook explicitly to support farmers in realising ‘appropriate revenues’ and to achieve a standesgemäße Lebensführung 321

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(lifestyle befitting their estate). Far-reaching measures to ‘stabilize markets’ were seen as the most appropriate instruments to guarantee farm incomes and to preserve family farming: this was defined as the general principle of agricultural policy, albeit that it significantly limited the scope for structural change. Excessive German agricultural protectionism led to agricultural prices in the FRG during the pre-EEC phase being higher than in the other EEC founder members. To sustain that excessive level, ‘the Germans succeeded in transferring German style market organization to the European level’ very well (Koester, 2000: 216) and it was they who were mainly responsible for the extremely protectionist, interventionist and expensive design of the CAP, which led to over-production, world markets in disarray and deep conflicts in World Trade Organization negotiations. For decades, it was the FRG that hindered liberalization of the CAP and even the emergence of a common European agricultural market, in order to protect her farmers via the extensive use of exemptions enforced against the other EEC (now EU) members. It was the German legacy to the CAP for income stabilization and the preservation of family farming to be defined as that policy’s main targets and for agricultural market policy to be used excessively as an instrument of farm income policy. From the point of view of German farmers, the CAP had the big advantage of allowing them to control State interventionism much more effectively according to their own economic interests than was the case during the Third Reich. The founder members of the EEC agreed to this unsound policy, with the result that, until around 1990, more than 70 per cent of the EEC budget was spent on agriculture, though only because the FRG accepted to bear the major burden of financing the CAP, thereby voluntarily becoming the ‘paymaster of Europe’. This was the price for the ‘historical compromise’ between, on the one hand, German industry and politicians, both needing the common market, as well as integration into Europe, and, on the other, German farmers, who feared at least that common market (Koester 2000, Gessner, 2006; Wehler, 2008b: 81–88; Wilson and Wilson, 2001: 71–111).

Farmers facing agro-industrial enterprises and food retail chains Deep structural changes nevertheless took place in German food chains. New ways of strengthening co-ordination at all food-chain stages emerged first in North-west Germany; indeed, highly innovative food chains contributed strongly to North-west Germany remaining the leading agricultural region of the former West Germany (Kopsidis, 2014). Besides the progressive spread of contract farming as a new type of highly vertically integrated business organization, there also developed agro-industrial enterprises marked by decentralized and specialist management; through the vertical integration of several stages of the food chain into one enterprise, these realized tremendous cost savings, especially in the intensive, mass farming of animals. Most suited to the vertically integrated agro-industrial business approach was poultry farming, to a less extent pig farming and to a much smaller extent cattle farming. The formation of several highly vertically integrated agro-enterprises comprising some or all stages of the poultry, beef, egg or pork chain set in train an agricultural 322



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Illustration 10.4  Slaughterhouse in Flensburg, Germany, c. 1950, photo

development in the two Southern Oldenburg districts of Cloppenburg and Vechta that was singular within a German context. During the mid-1960s, ten to fifteen years later than in the Southern Netherlands, agribusiness extending far beyond the limits of family farms made its appearance in Southern Oldenburg, which is today the epitome of industrial agriculture in Germany. Some of the Northwest-German food enterprises that emerged during this process now operate internationally, such as the PHW Group, which, according to its own figures, has 4 750 employees, slaughters around 4.5 million chickens a week and realizes an annual turnover close to 2 billion euros (2007–2008). The build-up of a spatially strongly concentrated agro-industrial agglomeration in Southern Oldenburg came about both for historical reasons and through the advantageous location of the area. Local cattle and feed traders, who, since the establishment of railway connections, had organized trade to the western urban-industrial belts, as well as the large-scale importation of feed, were the first to set up large, industrial meatprocessing and feedstuff enterprises in the region. Locally based, vertically integrated industrial enterprises started to organize the poultry food chain in the mid-1960s, the business idea, license contracts and the technology coming from the USA, as did, via air freight, the first hybrid chickens. Among the locational advantages of Southern Oldenburg were its intermediate position between the seaports of the North Sea and 323

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the demand centres of the Rhine and Ruhr, very good traffic connections, an absence of industrial competition on local labour markets, its sparse population and a stable political situation dominated by the conservative CDU party, which was well-disposed towards farmers (Windhorst, 1989). These last two points should not be lost sight of, given the severe environmental pollution connected with the spatially highly concentrated, industrial farming of animals. The emergence of agro-industrial enterprises was underpinned by strong concentration in retail trade, a process that started around 1970, prompted by the rise of huge lowprice retail chains. During the last four decades, concentration in the food processing industry and especially in the food retail trade has revolutionized the entire German food chain. Most important, the at one time quite satisfactory bargaining power that farmers enjoyed has declined substantially, despite all the highly subsidized efforts to reinvigorate formerly successful co-operatives. Farmers have become the weakest link in the food chain, which is also indicated by the fact that ‘farmers’ share in consumer food expenditure is constantly decreasing while marketing margins have increased accordingly’ (Weindlmaier, 2000: 285). However, changes in marketing margins reflect not only shifts in market power between the various stages, but also the shift of value added within German food chains. Until the 1970s, the small-scale food trade in the FRG was organized as a three-tier system: central wholesale trade, regional wholesale trade and local retail trade. This organizational structure then became transformed into a modern and highly competitive distribution system within which, by the end of the twentieth century, the ten largest retailers had a market share of 90 per cent. With a few exceptions, all three levels have now been integrated within single enterprises that also centralize all purchase activities. One important consequence of this is that leading retail companies are now able to exert very strong market power, giving them an edge over upstream players in the food chain. Moreover, the price pressure on the food industry and farmers has been magnified by the intense price struggle between the biggest low-price retail chains. Strong price- and quality-competition on saturated food markets is forcing the large retailers to look to achieve maximum efficiency at every stage of the food chain. Additionally, increasing quality demands require co-ordinated quality management to ensure the necessary consumer orientation of food chain activities at all stages. All these developments serve to reinforce the increasing vertical integration of food chains promoted by the large retailers, and yet a further factor is that continuing concentration in the retail trade is accelerating concentration in the food processing industry and in agricultural production, as well. The need for just-in-time production, the extensive quality requirements and the price-fixing power of retailers mean that only large suppliers can hope to be adequate partners for these food retail companies (Weindlmaier, 2000). German food trade enterprises (Metro, Aldi, Rewe and Edeka, for example) are now among the largest in the world, expanding all over the globe. Their rise has been very much due to German consumers, who are extremely price-conscious. Germany’s food price level is below the EU average and the share of food in total consumption expenditure is, at 12 per cent in a EU comparison, rather low. German consumers of 324



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all classes regularly buy at low-price retail chains, which are continuing to expand forcefully; consumer interest in quality has become significantly stronger and health awareness is increasingly influencing buying decisions. Organic food is on the way to leaving its niche, having become a booming and promising market that the low-price retail chains have started to penetrate. Thus, Germany’s farmers, food industry and retailers are now being forced ‘to square the circle’. Consumers want cheap food and their quality demands have noticeably increased (Axel Springer AG Marktanalyse, 2008: 5–11). In fact, the imperative of modern quality management is pushing up costs, whereas the pressure for cost cuts within the German food chain is still rising. It therefore looks as though structural change at all levels of the German food chain will accelerate.

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Bibliography Abel, W. (1966) Agrarkrisen und Agrarkonjunktur, Hamburg. Achilles, W. (1978) ‘Die niedersächsische Landwirtschaft im Zeitalter der Industrialisierung 1820–1914’, Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte, 50, pp. 7–26. Axel Springer AG Marktanalyse (2008) BranchenBericht. Ernährungstrends 2008, Hamburg. Bass, H.-H. (1991) Hungerkrisen in Preußen während der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts, St. Katharinen. Baten, J. and Wagner, A. (2003) ‘Mangelernährung, Krankheit und Sterblichkeit im NS-Wirtschaftsaufschwung (1933–1937)’, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 2003/1, pp. 99–123. Burgholz, D. (1987) ‘Privater Lebensmittelverbrauch und kommunale Lebensmittelvorsorge während der Urbanisierung Preußens’, in H.-J. Teuteberg (ed.), Durchbruch zum modernen Massenkonsum, Münster, pp. 97–126. Corni, G. and Gies, H. (1997) Brot, Butter, Kanonen. Die Ernährungswirtschaft in Deutschland unter der Diktatur Hitlers, Berlin. Croon, H. (1966) ‘Die Versorgung der Großstädte des Ruhrgebietes im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert’, Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, 179, pp. 356–368. Ellerbrock, K.-P. (1987) ‘Lebensmittelqualität vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg: Industrielle Produktion und staatliche Gesundheitspolitik’, in H.-J. Teuteberg (ed.), Durchbruch zum modernen Massenkonsum, Münster, pp. 127–188. Ellis, F. (1996) Peasant economics. Farm households and agrarian development, Cambridge. Gehrmann, R. (2000) Bevölkerungsgeschichte Norddeutschlands zwischen Aufklärung und Vormärz, Berlin. Gessner, D. (2006) ‘Marktregulierende Agrarpolitik in Deutschland 1924/25 bis 1967: Entwicklung, Ziele, Alternativen und Handlungsspielräume’, Vierteljahrschrift für Sozialund Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 93, pp. 131–171. Hardach, K. W. (1967) Die Bedeutung wirtschaftlicher Faktoren bei der Wiedereinführung der Eisen- und Getreidezölle in Deutschland 1879, Berlin. Koester, U. (2000) ‘The role of Germany in the Common Agricultural Policy’, in S. Tangermann (ed.), Agriculture in Germany, Frankfurt a. M., pp. 209–229. Kopsidis, M. (1996) Marktintegration und Entwicklung der westfälischen Landwirtschaft 1780–1880. Marktorientierte ökonomische Entwicklung eines bäuerlich strukturierten Agrarsektors, Münster. Kopsidis, M. (2002) ‘Peasant’s accounting books in the context of a market-oriented agricultural development. The case of Westphalia 1750–1880’, in K.-J. Lorenzen-Schmidt and B. Poulsen (eds), Writing peasants, Gylling, pp. 130–150. Kopsidis, M. (2006) Agrarentwicklung. Historische Agrarrevolutionen und Entwicklungsökonomik, Stuttgart. Kopsidis, M. (2014) ‘North-west Germany, 1750-2000’, in Thoen, E. and Soens, T. (eds), Struggling with the environment. Land use and productivity, Turnhout (in press). Küpker, M. (2008) Weber, Hausierer, Hollandgänger. Demografischer und wirtschaftlichere Wandel im ländlichen Raum, Frankfurt, Frankfurt.

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Lesniczak, P. (2003) Alte Landschaftsküchen im Sog der Modernisierung: Studien zur Ernährungsgeographie Deutschlands zwischen 1860 und 1930, Stuttgart. Lorenzen-Schmidt, K, (2000) ‘Agrarproduktion, Betriebsführung und politische, ökonomische und soziale Bedingungen der Agrarproduktion im Schleswig-Holstein des 20. Jahrhunderts’, Rundbrief des Arbeitskreises für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte SchleswigHolsteins, 78, pp. 11–34. Lorenzen-Schmidt, K, (2003) ‘Zwischen Krise und Boom – Wirtschaftliche Entwicklung 1830–1864’ and ’Neuorientierung auf den deutschen Wirtschaftsraum –Wirtschaftliche Entwicklung 1864–1918’, in U. Lange (ed.), Geschichte Schleswig-Holsteins, Neumünster, pp. 368–384, 384–399. Moeller, R. G. (1986a) German peasants and agrarian politics, 1914–1924. The Rhineland and Westphalia, Chapel Hill. Moeller, R. G. (1986b) ‘Economic dimensions of peasant protest in the transition from Kaiserreich to Weimar’, in R. G. Moeller (ed.), Peasants and lords in modern Germany, Boston, pp. 140–167. Müller-Wille, W. (1981) Westfalen. Landschaftliche Ordnung und Bindung eines Landes, Münster. Mütter, B. (2004) ‘“Auf den Großmärkten des rheinisch-westfälischen Industriegebiets bildet das Oldenburger Schwein eine Klasse für sich”. Viehzucht im Herzogtum Oldenburg während der Industrialisierungsepoche (1871–1914)’, Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte, 76, pp. 1–26. Nolte, H.-H. (1999) ‘Eine sowjetische Liste der Personalverluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg von 1946’, Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts, 14/1, 126–133. Nonn, C. (1996) ‘Fleischvermarktung in Deutschland im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert’, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 1996/1, pp. 53–75. Obal, U. (1999) Marktintegration Nordwestdeutschlands im 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert am Beispiel der Getreidemärkte, Hannover: PhD manuscript. Offner, A. (1989) The First World War. An agrarian interpretation, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Pohl, D. (2009) Die Herrschaft der Wehrmacht. Deutsche Militärbesatzung und einheimische Bevölkerung in der Sowjetunion 1941–1944, München. Robisheaux, T. (1998) ‘The peasantries of Western Germany, 1300–1750’, in T. Scott (ed.), The peasantries of Europe. From the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries, London, pp. 111–142. Spiekermann, U. (1999) Basis der Konsumgesellschaft. Entstehung und Entwicklung des modernen Kleinhandels in Deutschland 1850–1914, München. Teuteberg, H.-J. (1986a) ‘Der Verzehr von Nahrungsmitteln in Deutschland pro Kopf und Jahr seit Beginn der Industrialisierung (1850–1975). Versuch einer quantitativen Langzeitanalyse’, in H.-J. Teuteberg and G. Wiegelmann, Unsere tägliche Kost, Münster, pp. 225–279. Teuteberg, H.-J. (1986b) ‘Die tägliche Kost unter dem Einfluß der Industrialisierung’, in H.-J. Teuteberg and G. Wiegelmann, Unsere tägliche Kost, Münster, pp. 345–361. Theine, B. (1991) Westfälische Landwirtschaft in der Weimarer Republik, Paderborn. Theine, B. (1991) Westfälische Landwirtschaft in der Weimarer Republik, Paderborn.

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Walter, B. and Küster, T. (eds) (2011) ‘Aus der Hand in den Mund – Selbstversorgung als Praxis und Vision in der modernen Gesellschaft’, Westfälische Forschungen, 61. Wehler, H.-U. (2008a) Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte 1914–1949, vol. 4, München. Wehler, H.-U. (2008b) Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte 1949–1990, vol. 5, München. Weindlmaier, H. (2000) ‘The value-added chain in the German food sector’, in S. Tangermann (ed.), Agriculture in Germany, Frankfurt a. M., pp. 283–312. Wiedenfeld, K (1909) ‘Die Organisation des Getreidehandels’, Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, vol. 4, Jena, pp. 770–783. Wiegelmann, G. (1986) ‘Tendenzen kulturellen Wandels in der Volksnahrung des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in H.-J. Teuteberg and G. Wiegelmann, Unsere tägliche Kost, Münster, pp. 363–370. Wilson, G.A., Wilson, O.J. (2001) German agriculture in Transition, Basingstoke. Windhorst, H.-W. (1989) Die Industrialisierung der Agrarwirtschaft. Ein Vergleich ablaufender Prozesse in den USA und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Frankfurt a. M.

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Scandinavia

Illustration 11.1  Sowing and harvesting, c. 1450–1480, fresco in the church of Reerslev, Denmark

11 Scandinavia, 1000–1750 Bjørn Poulsen As maintained by the Danish economist Ester Boserup, population growth in preindustrial societies will tend to prompt an intensification of agriculture (Boserup, 1965). If this is right, it comes as no surprise that we can observe a grain-based economy taking firm root in the Nordic countries in the wake of a population increase from around the year 1000. The reduced importance of cattle brought an overall higher return per acre, albeit that this was not an entirely settled situation. From around 1400, cattle regained a footing in the Scandinavian economies and it is clear that, with the fall in its price during the fifteenth century, meat became more widely consumed, only the rich having been able to afford much of it before then. Conversely, the population growth of the sixteenth and eighteenth century seems to have been accompanied by lower consumption of animal products. The balance between grain and cattle changed somewhat over time, but the transition to a grain-based economy around 1000 remains the basic fact of Nordic agricultural history.1

11. 1 Nordic populations and infrastructure Regional differences Throughout this whole period, however, large regional differences remained between the Nordic countries in regard to the balance between grain and cattle. There were, on the one hand, the predominantly grain-based lowlands of Denmark and eastern central Sweden, the Mälar area, and, on the other, the cattle-grazing-based mountainous areas of much of Sweden and Norway. In the most northern parts of Sweden and Norway, there was even the extreme case of the nomadic Lapps, with their economy based on reindeer herding. To contemporary enlightened observers, the resulting regional dietary differences in Scandinavia produced quite different kinds of people. As the famous Swedish scientist Carl Linné put it around the middle of the eighteenth century: ‘Diet changes the inhabitants of a realm enormously’, noting, as an example, that the northernmost people of Sweden, depending on meat, fish and birds, were small, light and speedy, whereas the peasants of the Skåne lowlands in the southernmost part of Sweden, depending on cereals, peas and porridge of buckwheat and cereals, appeared to him as large, crude, strong, slow and heavy. A dividing line in the Nordic countries has also been determined by modern historians with regard to the crucial determinant 1

The following text owes much to the Scandinavian national agrarian histories of: Porsmose, 1988; Frandsen, 1988; Myrdal, 1999; Gadd, 2000; Lunden 2002; Norwegian Agricultural History, 2004.

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map 11 Scandinavia, 1000–1750

State Boundaries Rivers

0

75

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AT L A N T I C O C E A N Trondheim

N O R W AY

S W E D E N

Bergen

UPPLAND

VÄRMLAND

Oslo

Sigtuna

Örebro

Stockholm

Skara

GOTLAND

HA

LÆSØ

SMÅLAND

LL

Ålborg

AN D

Randers Århus

N O R T H S E A

JUTLAND

D E N M A R K SAMSØ

Kolding Ribe Assens Aabenraa

Odense

SCHLESWIG Schleswig

HOLSTEIN

SKÅNE

Roskilde A M A G E R

SJÆLLAND FUNEN ÆRØ

332

Copenhagen

MØN Sakskøbing L O L - FA L S T E R LAND BØTØ FEHMARN

BLEKINGE

Lund

B A LT I C S E A



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of food exchange brought about by urbanization. The densely populated Kingdom of Denmark had a relatively large number of towns, as against the other two countries, also extensively cultivated, where there were far fewer of them. This had consequences for the existing transport systems and for the degree of self-supply in Nordic rural areas.

Population, urbanization, and demand Politically, even though they were remarkably stable units, the three realms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden experienced a number of territorial changes during the period under review. In the twelfth and thirteenth century, firstly, Finland was colonized and incorporated into the Swedish realm. During the period from 1397 to 1521, secondly, the three countries were more or less politically united under Danish kings in the Kalmar Union. In 1521, Sweden became an independent kingdom, but Norway remained under Danish royal rule and domination until 1814. Denmark, on the other hand, lost some of her most vital provinces to Sweden in the seventeenth century when, in 1645, the provinces of Halland and Gotland and, in 1658, even more seriously, Skåne and Blekinge were surrendered. In 1645, Norway similarly ceded the provinces of Jemtland and Herjedalen to Sweden and, in 1658, Båhuslen. These changes in political territory should be kept in mind in discussions about demographic development, where the Nordic countries roughly followed the general European trend. There was demographic growth in all the Nordic countries between 1000 and 1350, and it seems quite safe to say that population doubled in all of them. It can be estimated that, at the maximum point of growth before the mid-fourteenth century, Norway had about half a million inhabitants, Sweden 0.7–0.8 million and Denmark between 1.2 and 2 million, though the lower figure is the more likely. From 1350, population figures dropped dramatically and by around 1450 Norway had only about 0.15–0.2 million inhabitants, Sweden about 0.3–0.4 million and Denmark not more than half a million (Myrdal, 2010; Myrdal, 2011; Hybel and Poulsen, 2008). Thereafter, numbers revived in all countries. By the mid-seventeenth century, Norway had a population of 0.4 million, Sweden (excluding Finland, Skåne and other provinces) 0.6 million and Denmark 0.8 million (including the 0.2 million living in Skåne and other provinces ceded to Sweden 1645–58). During the first part of the eighteenth century, a relatively stable situation prevailed. In Norway, the population rose to some 0.7 million; in Denmark, population growth more or less cancelled out the loss of inhabitants consequent on the ceding of territory; in Sweden, (with all her provinces, including the newly conquered eastern part of Denmark), the population at that moment totalled 1.8 million ( Johansen, 2002). The number of towns in the Nordic countries before the year 1000 was very small and could be reckoned on the fingers of one hand. Defined as chartered settlements with their own separate administration and jurisdiction, and with market rights, they nevertheless became numerous during the 1150–1300 period. Around 1250, Denmark had at least seventy market towns, Sweden (with Finland) more than forty and Norway fourteen, figures that corresponded to differences in the degree of urbanization. Whereas the proportion of the population living in towns around that date was, 333

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in Denmark, probably about 10 per cent, rising to about 15 per cent by the end of the fifteenth century and remaining at that level into the seventeenth century, it was only 4–5 per cent in Sweden and Norway. In Denmark, townspeople constituted 24 per cent of the population in 1672; in Sweden, the extent of urbanization ratio moved up to 10 per cent during the seventeenth century, remaining at that level for the next hundred and fifty years; in Norway, that ratio increased from 7 per cent in the mid-seventeenth century to 8.8 per cent by the end of the eighteenth (Lilja, 1994). Central agglomerations with larger supply needs emerged out of this urbanization. Already in the twelfth century, Bergen was a major exporter of stockfish to international markets and had great importance as a centre for the northern Norwegian coastal areas, from which it obtained fish and to whose rural population it sold grain in return. Nevertheless, its population during the Middle Ages never exceeded 10 000 and it may indeed be doubted whether the population of any other Scandinavian town did so before the sixteenth century. During the second half of the fifteenth century, Stockholm had only about 7 000 inhabitants and Copenhagen probably even fewer. Large medieval centres of consumption and exchange in Denmark and Sweden were found at only two places, both characterized by trade and industry. One of these was Bergslagen, the region of central Sweden where, from the thirteenth century, copper and iron were professionally extracted. The production district not only had to be constantly supplied with food from a wide area, but also furthered growth in Stockholm and formed a basis for relatively strong urbanization in central Sweden from around 1300. In the Danish realm, the annual markets of southern Skåne, where large amounts of herring were traded from around 1200, became important exchange centres. Besides fish, cloth from Flanders was also traded on those markets, along with Rhenish wine, beer, wax, millstones, furs, hemp, salt, meat and hides. Although they appear to have been at their peak during the second half of the fourteenth century, there is general reason to view those markets as the most important trading ports for the Danish import and export trade during the entire period from the mid-thirteenth century to the fifteenth, and of great importance for especially east-Danish agrarian production. Apart from England, trade with which was of some importance in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the wider world with which the Nordic countries interacted consisted primarily of the areas of the Southern Baltic, where, from around 1200, a long line of German towns came into existence; of these, Lübeck became the most important, functioning to a high degree up to the 1520s as a kind of metropolis for the whole region north and south of the Baltic. From the end of the fifteenth century, however, the capitals of Sweden and Denmark themselves grew in importance as the Nordic countries became involved in an expanding European economy. During the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Copenhagen and Stockholm developed increasingly as national capitals and sites of government of their respective, expanding realms. Around 1650, the population of Copenhagen reached about 30 000, growing to 81 000 by 1750. In 1630 or so, the population of Stockholm was no more than 10 000–15 000, but thereafter rose rapidly to about 60 000 by around 1700 and to 65 000 by 1770. The two developing capitals had necessarily to attract supplies from near and far: in Sweden’s case, this for some time took in a huge military 334



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empire; in Denmark’s case, the entire conglomerate State, including Schleswig-Holstein and Norway (with Iceland and the Faeroes). The growth of the capitals also rested on trade with Atlantic states, primarily the northern Low Countries, which became an important buyer of Nordic goods in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Transport and infrastructure Sea communications were essential for the Nordic countries, all of which have long coastlines. Sailing conditions were easiest along the Danish coast, which was not prone to the ice and storms that could hinder transport along the Norwegian and Swedish coasts for long periods of the year. In Sweden and Norway, inland sailing was not very important, even though the great lakes of Sweden were intensively used for communication. Shipping experienced a revolution in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, particularly from the beginning of the twelfth century, when regular freight ships were beginning to sail the northern waters. The finds made of large ships that were clinker-built in the Nordic tradition, driven only by sails and able to carry bulk indicate that sea transport was becoming professionalized. Many of those ships were able to transport fifty to sixty tons; indeed, the largest of the Nordic ship finds, the so-called ‘Bergenship’ from 1188, could carry 120 tons. These ships clearly reflected the urbanization that was taking place in those years; functionally, they gradually gave way to equally large cog-type vessels, which probably had the additional advantage of being capable of being sailed with even fewer men than the traditional Nordic freight ship. Large-scale seaborne bulk trade expanded further from the fifteenth century, with the largest ships able to carry 400 tons of freight, though more important were the many small vessels, of which thousands criss-crossed the waters. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, ships from the northern part of the Low Countries like the fluit, which offered cheap freight rates, became very crucial for Danish agricultural exports, although local vessels were nevertheless always the most important. The most frequently type used locally was the very small skude, which carried only about twenty-four tons or less and which was often, at least up to around 1500, peasant-owned. Indeed, Nordic waters can be divided into a number of marine transport zones for local and foreign traffic, an example being the Wadden Sea in the west or the Baltic Sea. It can in fact be shown that each zone had its own specific type of vessel suited to the regional waters in which it worked. The many small ships were essential for the local and regional distribution of agrarian products. Marine transport was always cheaper than land transport and goods consequently tended to be more expensive inland; in Denmark, indeed, a law of the thirteenth century stated that a barrel of beer should cost one half more in inland towns than in coastal towns. But land transport was certainly important and several types of road came into existence, both large, common roads and smaller, local roads. From the eleventh century, moreover, bridges were built over watercourses and kings to an increasing degree took care of their upkeep. Horses became more numerous during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and their size grew. A harness that permitted them to work as effective draught animals had been developed in the late Iron Age 335

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and the Viking Age, and the use of horseshoes spread from the eleventh century and became common in the thirteenth. Peasants in Denmark often worked with oxen as draught animals, but wagons hauled by horses also became increasingly used and, not surprisingly, came to dominate long-distance transport. In many places in Sweden and Norway, the terrain dictated that goods be transported on horseback, though wagons and, during winter-time, sledges were in general use, too. From the Middle Ages on, every peasant in lowland regions had a wagon and, at least in Denmark, a system of professional vognmænd (carriers) came into existence, driving wagons on firmly established routes between towns and across the Danish border to North-German towns.

11.2 Agriculture and food in a socially differentiated society Rural society Society in all the Nordic countries during the Viking Age (800–1050) was marked by substantial social differentiation. There were powerful magnates with many trælle (slaves) and some among them exacted tribute from quite large areas: in the inscription on an eleventh-century rune stone from Uppland, Sweden, a man named Jarlabanke proudly proclaims that ‘alone he owned the whole of Täby’ and ‘alone he owned the whole of this hundare (district)’. Throughout Scandinavia, large Viking-age farms that clearly belonged to people of high status have been excavated. It seems to have been in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that land management took the European form of large farms run by vilici (bailiffs), as found in Denmark and Sweden, or the general system of smaller farms rented by tenants (landboer in Danish, leilendinge in Norwegian), often on very short-term leases. Vital for this development was the tighter legal definition of lordly ownership and the strengthened royal power, which in all Nordic countries enforced the law and the rights of possession. Where curiæ villicales or brydegårde (manors or large farms) – found only in Denmark and Sweden – were leased out, it was normal for landlords to supply livestock, grain and important tools, and in return to receive a proportion of the produce. In the wake of the plague epidemics that began in the mid-fourteenth century and the decline in the population, most of the large curiæ villicales were divided into smaller units, which were rented out; as a rule, thus, there was a manorial system with the lord’s manor (hovedgård in Danish) surrounded by rather large tenant farms (fæstebønder in Danish) with reasonably secure life-time tenure. In Denmark in late medieval and early modern times, tenant farms were particularly well established, covering between ten and twenty hectares (in 1682, their average size was seventeen hectares), more than twice the normal arable of Swedish farms; everywhere, however, most very small farms disappeared. Manors became a constituent part of rural life in southern Scandinavia up to the late eighteenth century – and even later – but even in Denmark, the country most dominated by manorial production, peasants still worked 90 per cent of the land. Some owner-occupied farms were still being divided among the heirs in the Late Middle Ages, but thereafter the practice ceased – at least in Denmark –and farms, both 336



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owner-occupied and tenant, were kept intact. A clear division between farm holders and the rest of the rural population was created and a group of nearly or totally landless crofters came into existence in all Nordic countries as populations began to grow from the first decades of the sixteenth century on. These people were forced to live by working for peasants or as fishermen or craftsmen. Servants were always found in rural households where there were insufficient children to do the necessary work on the farm, and their number increased in line with the rise in the early modern population.

Seigneurial economy and food markets The Nordic countries were all to a high degree characterized by a ‘seigneurial economy’, a system which some historians have also termed ‘feudalism’. Characteristically, in such a system, a proportion of production was moved in kind or money from the producer upon State or seigneurial command and made available to consumers. The landowners in question were the Crown, the Church and the nobility; moreover, part of the land was freehold, most of it worked by owner-occupiers. In Denmark around 1500, 85 per cent of farms were held by tenants and only 15 per cent by owner-occupiers, whose numbers declined even further in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Owner-occupiers were more numerous in the other Nordic countries: in Norway around 1500, 20 per cent of the land was in their hands (with 30 per cent held freehold); in Sweden around the same time, 45 per cent of the peasantry consisted of owner-occupiers (skattebönder in Swedish). However, there is some doubt about how important the social difference between tenants and freeholders/owner-occupiers was in individual regions in the Early Modern Period; furthermore, one should not be too much impressed by the growing amount of land possessed by Norwegian owner-occupiers during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as they were burdened by debt to their former lords. Generally, owner-occupiers and tenants were subjected to approximately the same level of seigneurial dues, which were very high before the mid-fourteenth century, but decreased rapidly thereafter. In all Scandinavian countries, kings were able to increase extraordinary taxes, especially from the fifteenth century on; these were collected from both the Crown’s own peasants (owner-occupiers and tenants) and the tenants of lords, these last at the same time seeking likewise to increase their own levies. Nevertheless, it is true that the total sum of dues imposed on the rural population remained relatively small up to the sixteenth century. In all Nordic countries, royal taxes moved slowly up from the 1620s, with Swedish taxes initially the highest and remaining virtually unchanged at a high level from the end of the seventeenth century on. In Denmark, it was only about 1740 that the real tax burden was relaxed to some extent. There is no doubt that the high level of taxation had an enormous impact on peasant consumption and production: on the one hand, it led to food shortages and upset the chances of a market economy emerging; on the other, it stimulated further production. In eighteenth-century Denmark, peasants evidently had to increase grain production and reduce cattle stocks to be able to pay the rising taxes; in Sweden, tax pressure led to an increase in peasant production of such products as coal and tar. 337

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It is also generally clear that there was an intricate interplay between the land rents and the taxes demanded, marketing and rural production. In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Denmark, landowners stated that land rent in the form of pigs should be paid on moorland that lacked the necessary masting resources to feed these animals, action that must have forced peasants to buy up pigs from other areas. In some Danish areas, barley was mainly grown specifically for rents and for sale, with rye being cultivated for family use (Dam, 2008). In some cases, land rent from peasant farms in Jutland was even levied in salt from the Lüneburg mines, as a way of helping the lord to obtain supplies of this indispensable means of conservation. It has moreover been proved that, in Sweden in the sixteenth century, the State required farms outside the iron-producing areas of Bergslagen to pay taxes in iron, in order to stimulate both supplies of food to the iron industry and the sale of iron. The seigneurial economy absorbed a large share of the surplus of rural production. In the late eighteenth century, the Church tithe in grain levied on a typical Sjælland tenant farm was one ninth of the harvest; a peasant working such a farm probably sold more than 50 per cent of his grain production and was liable to pay about 40 per cent of the money thereby earned to his landlord and the Crown (Christiansen, 1996: 157). The amount of grain marketed by the producer could vary and, in some cases, most of the rents and taxes were paid in kind to the lord. As a consequence, much of the basic transport of food was carried out by the lord collecting rent in kind and making it available to consumers. In late medieval Denmark and Sweden, some of the most important sellers of grain and cattle to Hanseatic merchants and merchants from the Low Countries were indeed the large landowners, predominantly bishops and royal officers disposing of their rents. Danish noblemen also engaged in the organization of large-scale trading and shipping of grain, meat, hides and butter to such places as Lübeck and Flanders, although most of them withdrew from long-distance trade from the 1550s on, in order to concentrate on agricultural production. Nevertheless, most Danish cattle and grain traded internationally still came from rents paid in kind to noblemen or to the Crown The Crown, too, remained an extremely important trader in agricultural goods received through taxes and rents. In Sweden from the 1540s to the 1620s, royal warehouses were organized to store and sell goods accumulated as revenues paid in kind on the royal domains. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Danish royal officers of the len (districts) distributed large quantities of agricultural produce collected as taxes and rents for the central administration. Much Danish shipping until the mid-seventeenth century was concerned with transporting royal goods. In 1625, when war threatened, more than 200 ships from all around the country transported food to a military camp on Sjælland, though grain and other food from the royal domains were shipped and transported hither and thither in peacetime, too. At local level, for instance, it was the practice in periods of the seventeenth century for all pigs delivered as taxes to the Crown to be driven to a central farm for slaughter. In 1619, for instance, 3  000 tax pigs from most of Jutland were driven to a royal slaughterhouse in eastern Jutland, where they were slaughtered under the direction of slaughterers and cooks sent from the capital of Copenhagen, as well as of some local peasants. The king’s own ship brought 338



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Illustration 11.2  Provianthuset (warehouse with ­provisions for the royal fleet and army in Copenhagen), 1611, detail from ­copper engraving by Jan Diricksen, after a painting by Johannes van Wijck

a large cargo of salt and the cured meat was sent to the royal Provianthus (food warehouse) in Copenhagen. The interplay between the seigneurial or feudal economy and the more or less free market sale is important in any analysis of the ways that food circulated in society.

11.3  The agro-food chain from c. 1000 to 1350 Social patterns of consumption The distribution of food was closely connected to the social scale. The complexion of early Scandinavian society can be seen in the Nordic poem Rigsthula (The Song of Rig). Although its exact date of composition is disputed, this text explains on a mythological basis the origins of the different castes of early society and gives an indication of what could be expected to be on tables around the year 1000 (Rigsthula, 1997). First, the main person of the poem, Rig, enters the home of slaves or thralls: ‘Then Great-grandmother took A gross loaf, Weighty and thick Wedged with grains. 339

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More, she brought it then In the middle of the dishes. Broth was in the bowl, She set that on the table’. The bread served by the slave woman was most probably made of oats and could well have been produced just by packing unfermented dough in leaves and placing it in the earth, encased in warm ashes. We should also note that there seems to be no meat and that only soup is served; soup and porridge remained for long the food of poor people. Things were different in the home of the middle-class member of Nordic society, the bonde (freeholder/owner-occupier): [Then Grandmother took a yeasty loaf, …… and brown, of barley meal.] ‘More she brought it then in the middle of the dishes Boiled veal there was, best of dainties’. The first four lines are an attempted reconstruction by the editor of the poem and little attention should be paid to them in our context. But we should certainly notice that veal is served, a clear sign of a more elevated social status. Yet higher status is met in the case of the lord: ‘Then Mother took a patterned cloth, white, of thick linen, covered the table. Then she took thin loaves, white of wheat-flour, and covered the cloth’. ‘Out she brought brimful dishes, silver-mounted, [set] them on the table: Fresh game and pig’s flesh and fowls roasted. There was wine in a flagon, ornamented goblets. They drank and discoursed the day was passing’. 340



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In this home of good table manners, bread made of wheat is eaten. Wheat was a luxury in Scandinavia and had to be imported into the more northerly regions, as it could not grow there. The thin, white, wheat bread must almost certainly have been baked on a flat stone .The meat served included game birds, and wine imported from southern countries was drunk from silver cups. Between the eleventh and the thirteenth century, the slaves of the Rigsthula disappeared in all Scandinavian countries and the social structure came instead to rest on a more or less pronounced division between peasant and lords. We can only speculate on what the existence of the thirteenth-century peasantry was like, but it has pessimistically been suggested that, in the case of Norway, the majority of the population lived on a subsistence minimum of only 2 000 calories a day (Lunden, 1976: 308). The life of the lord, on the other hand, was characterized first and foremost by a plentiful supply of everything. In King Valdemars Survey, dating from around 1230, we are told what Danish peasants were to give to the king when he arrived in their district. The list includes large amounts of honey, flour, malt, meat, butter, cheese, poultry and fish as well as oats for the horses. Similarly, a Norwegian source from the 1320s tells us that, when they arrived in parishes, the bishop of Bergen and his entourage were entitled to both strong and ordinary beer, three barrels of wine and about two tons of bread, as well as butter and other kinds of food. On the tables of very rich lords, there certainly appeared items that were exclusive to high status, such as wine, spices and venison. Moreover, lords were able to a larger degree than the common man to come by rare animals such as whales: for instance, the fact of the remains of an Arctic white whale being found at the fourteenth-century Næsholm Castle on Sjælland must be put down to Næsholm being a royal castle and to the king having the right to whales stranded on the foreshore. Fundamentally, the basic food consumed by all groups of society was meat from cattle, and grain, but peasant society was always more prone to having less of such food than lordly society. The blessing of food in the church and the religious processing of a cross around the fields in spring, which are documented in Danish laws of around 1200, had their real significance in being means of attempting to ensure a sufficiency of food. Food crises occurred regularly and the emergency measure of mixing bark with grain is documented from the Early Middle Ages onwards, especially in Norway and Sweden. Bad weather and hunger were often concurrent. The situation in Denmark in the 1090s, for example, is described by the English monk Ælnoth. He tells of the fields becoming barren, of meadows being poor in grass, of the wood producing scanty pannage, of disease destroying the cattle and of men weakened by illness, the rich perhaps surviving, those already vulnerable perishing. Judging from the sources, it seems that such years of bad weather and famine were especially frequent during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, whereas few such years were noted in the thirteenth. The severe famines of the second decade of the fourteenth century were also devastating, at least in Denmark, but otherwise constituted the only major crisis of this type recorded in the sources for that century. It may therefore be speculated that the pronounced economic growth of agrarian society in the thirteenth century could have been facilitated by favourable climatic circumstances (Poulsen and Hybel, 2008: 59–78). 341

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An expanding grain economy In the Scandinavian countries, as in large parts of the rest of Europe, there was an expansion of grain-based agriculture in the centuries after the year 1000. All Nordic countries experienced population growth and this led to land clearances to make room for more farms and permit an increase in the size of the cultivated part of individual plots. This last development was a consequence of the increasing importance of grain cultivation, which allowed more people to be fed. In Denmark, both archaeological finds and written laws testify to a development towards expanding fields on individual farms. It seems that it was during this period that the rather large medieval farm of an average 15 hectares came into existence here. In line with this, during the 1000–1150 period, was a development from individually owned and fenced fields (Blockfluren in German) to more collective field systems. In the eastern parts of Denmark were the so called ‘open-field systems’, where fields in shared rotation were commonly fenced. Here, the construction and maintenance of fences became an important issue for villages, and the responsibility of the individual farmer in relation to shared fencing was set out explicitly in the Law of Jutland, dating from 1241 (Poulsen, 1997). While it is clear that that a fully evolved three-field system was known in eastern Denmark around 1200, other systems existed in less fertile districts, concentrating on cattle. In Danish West Jutland, a system of small scattered fields with long fallow periods of three to six years was the most common. For central Norway, the early thirteenth century Frostathing law reveals a flexible, but small-scale, field system involving fallow periods where animals grazed a quarter of the arable (Norwegian Agricultural History, 2004: 115). Continuous cropping remained in the more northern and peripheral parts of Norway and Sweden. In Denmark, the 300–1000 period had already seen fields being manured more intensively and winter rye used in a field system with rotation. But it was only in the period from around 1000 that winter rye became a crop as important as the traditional barley and oats. There is archaeological evidence from about 1100 in Denmark for the long broad strips in the fields that lent themselves most effectively to rye cultivation. Oats also became more common during this period in Denmark, except in the moorlands of Jutland, which were not suitable for their cultivation. In Norway and Sweden, barley originally dominated, but oats became increasingly important. Winter rye was of some importance in eastern Norway from the early thirteenth century, whereas rye cultivation seemingly did not spread significantly in Sweden before the Late Middle Ages. Wheat growing in Denmark was limited and eating wheaten bread was, as indicated by the Rigsthula, often reserved for aristocrats. King Valdemar’s Survey (c. 1230) confirms that wheat was grown on the south-Danish islands of Fehmarn, Ærø, Falster, and Møn, as well as on the island of Samsø, just off Århus. In the following centuries, two areas in the south of Denmark – Lolland and Als – were apparently wheat-producing centres. In Norway, wheat was not a common crop, as clearly shown by the documented fact of the Norwegian king’s praise in 1186 for the English merchants who brought 342



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wheat to his country. In central Sweden, the share of wheat in the total amount of grain sown declined from about 10 per cent around the year 1000 to only 5 per cent in the fifteenth century.

Technology and bread That the importance of grain should have increased within a growing population is logical, but it certainly also reflected a cultural change. This shift involved both new habits and attitudes regarding food, and the use of technology; moreover, it may be characterized as part of an adoption of patterns in the wider Europe, which integrated tillage and pastoralism within a new agrarian dynamic. Very important on the technological side in southern Scandinavia was the introduction of the heavy mouldboard plough. The plough turned the furrow, unlike the Ironage ard (scratch plough), and its coulter could cut through heavy soil. In south-west Jutland, traces of a mouldboard plough have been found from as early as the fourth century, although it is pretty clear that the breakthrough of this type of plough in most of Denmark should generally be placed in the eleventh century. This matches the dating of the first high-ridged fields of this area, it being impossible to create such fields without the mouldboard plough. This plough was adopted in eastern Norway and western Sweden during the same period, the ard continuing in exclusive use in other parts of these countries. There was further expansion of the use of the mouldboard plough in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when it made its appearance in the central and northern parts of Sweden. Other aspects of the new technological complexity involved the increased use of horses, which were needed to pull the harrows that now appeared as an important element in farming. Harvesting the larger fields was also made easier and more efficient with the introduction of a new kind of sickle, the longer bow-sickle (with a curved blade), whose use apparently spread from around the year 1200. One of the most dramatic results of intensified grain cultivation, however, was to be found in the construction of mills. In the early-thirteenth-century Swedish Law of Västgöta, it is stressed that it is the duty of a slave woman to milk and to grind on a quern (hand mill). The mills that gradually replaced querns must have released much female labour in the countryside and they certainly help to explain why slave labour could be dispensed with; furthermore, they permitted much larger quantities of grain to be worked up. In Denmark, there now seems to be archaeological evidence for a watermill from the tenth century at the settlement of Omgaard in West Jutland, but other archaeological and written evidence indicates that they were not numerous before 1100. Watermills are mentioned in Danish sources dating from 1131 and later, and archaeology has located many of them from the second half of the twelfth century. In Norway, such mills appeared from the late twelfth century and there are frequent references to their presence in Sweden in the thirteenth century. Windmills are noted in Danish sources dating from 1259 and 1261 and similarly in Swedish sources from the second half of the thirteenth century. Horse-mills were also used in thirteenth-century Denmark. Even though querns still played a role in the fourteenth century in northern Scandinavia, 343

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large sections of the population there had access to mills. On the island of Sjælland, for example, a situation was reached in that century where virtually every second or third village had its mill, as can be calculated from the land surveys of the Bishop of Roskilde.

A bread culture From grain was made the often preferred porridge and bread. In medieval Scandinavia, grain was not ground on a day-to-day basis, but milled in larger quantities and then stored. In northern Sweden and Norway, the mills were normally small and owned by individual farm proprietors and it was often only in spring and after the harvest that there was water enough to drive their horizontal wheels. Consequently, rural households there consumed primarily flat bread (thin bread) made from barley, which was baked only twice or no more than a few times each year. This was also a custom welladapted to the work of the farms, which was intense in the short summer period and was often carried out a long distance from the farm itself; it could also involve summer farming in the mountains (seter) and fishing activities (Campbell, 1950). In Denmark, mills were generally much larger, were operated with vertical wheels and were owned by lords. They were able to work continuously all through the year and thus encouraged periodic baking when the need arose. This technology opened the way for the dominance of the softer rye bread, which, as in Central Europe (cf. the German Schwarzbrot), was made with a sourdough starter; it required an oven to bake it, unlike the flat bread of the northern regions, which was baked on stone plates. Ovens appeared in Denmark during the Early Middle Ages and it was not long before a clay type in cuboid form was present in all rural farms. Ovens built in brick were found in manors and lord’s residences both in Denmark and Sweden, and in the Late Middle Ages in some Danish farms, too. Bread (with butter) and beer became staples of the southern Scandinavian diet. Rye was used for bread, and barley became the main ingredient for beer. The old sort of beer that was still drunk in rural areas of Sweden in the Late Middle Ages was brewed with bog myrtle, but hopped beer gained importance from around 1200, and by 1300 or so had achieved total dominance in Denmark and in the towns and castles of Sweden and Norway. It became a major constituent of normal nutrition and, together with porridge of rye, barley or oats, supplemented the daily bread. Generally, the number of pigs on farms declined from around the year 1000, although animals remained an integral part of production, even where grain cultivation increased. In Danish open-field regions specializing in grain, every peasant would have at least two horses, two oxen, between two and four cows, and a few sheep; in some parts of Denmark, woods and meadows could sustain large numbers of cattle. Land surveys for fourteenth-century Sjælland document grain-based regions, where peasants paid their rents in grain, and other more wooded regions, where they paid their rents in butter or cash. Rents in butter were very common in areas rich in woodland, such as the north-eastern parts of the realm, i.e. Halland, Blekinge, and northern Skåne. It is also clear that, from very early times, western Jutland and western Schleswig were 344



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orientated towards grazing, their rich grass meadows supporting large herds of cattle; the farms in this region more typically paid their rents and duties in dairy produce. Further to the north in Jutland are moorland regions, which provided grazing for both cattle and sheep, the heather being cut for winter fodder. In large areas of Sweden and Norway, a cattle-and-sheep economy was still of major importance, too. The animals had to be stalled in winter, but at least from May could benefit from the large grazing areas in the outfields, woods and mountains. In the more peripheral areas, people moved with their livestock to pastures with setr (huts) to work on dairy production. Consequently, milk products played a much larger role there than in the more southern areas and it proved possible to export a considerable quantity of butter. In general, however, cattle breeding declined and meat and butter became relatively expensive in the centuries up to the mid-fourteenth. It has been estimated that, in the early fourteenth century, the amount of energy produced by consuming meat cost ten times more than an equal amount of energy produced by consuming grain (Lunden, 2002: 58). Grain and bread were dominant as long as the population was rising and cultivated land was scarce, though other products such as peas, beans and beet were, of course, part of the diet. Fish were always a vital element of diet, especially during times of fasting, and honey production should not be underestimated, either.

Trade and distribution The peasant household to a large degree produced what it needed, but was nevertheless drawn increasingly into a wider economy. A rather large part of the household’s production circulated in kind within the seigneurial economy and passed as income to kings and lords, which they traded. This tendency to market produce was most pronounced in urbanized Denmark, though the peasants and lords of Sweden and Norway, too, were unable to hold aloof from the market. The use of money became common. An increasing number of stray finds in Denmark of coins dating from the second half of the tenth century certainly indicates that small quantities of coins were often changing hands at that time, but it is clear that the real advance in the use of money occurred in the thirteenth century. Other stray finds in Denmark point to a rapid increase in the use of coins in local circulation, a development that can be pinpointed in towns to around 1150–1200; single finds in rural districts date relatively rarely to before the mid-thirteenth century. In Sweden, similarly, coins found in churches illustrate the way in which their common use began in the southern part of the country in the thirteenth century and gradually spread to the whole country during the fourteenth. Written sources make it clear that money was indeed used by peasants in Denmark and also to some degree by peasants in Norway. The land rents of Danish tenants, at least in Skåne, seem to have been paid in cash from around 1100. Indeed, the Paraphrase of the Law of Skåne, which dates from the early thirteenth century, states that the landbo (tenant) should pay his land rent to his lord in cash 345

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before 15 August, so that the latter could buy what he needed at the fish market, i.e. at the Scanian markets. The Halland List, which forms part of King Valdemar’s Survey and dates from about 1240, similarly records that the five northernmost herreder (administrative districts) in Halland were required to render to the king three silver marks ‘to buy fish ...when the king arrives’. Money came from the emerging towns, whose supplies of food were brought in by an increasing number of horses and ships transferring produce from the countryside to the towns, both locally and internationally. The export trade was primarily in fish. In the fourteenth century, more than a hundred thousand barrels of herring were shipped from Denmark to northern Europe each year and it has been estimated that, around 1300, Norway was exporting 3 000–4 000 tons of dried fish yearly, mainly to England (Lunden, 2002: 85). A late-thirteenth-century list from Bruges shows Norway exporting hides, butter, tallow, fat, peas and buckskin to this town; from Sweden came fat and tallow; and from Denmark horses, hides, fat, tallow and salted pork. Undoubtedly, thus, there was some international trading of agricultural products, and the number of animals going south from Denmark should not be underestimated; indeed, a customs treaty of 1252 from Damme, the harbour town of Bruges, records Frisians and Danes coming with horses and oxen. As a Danish customs tariff of 1316 bears out, the cattle products exported from Denmark could be meat, butter, fat, tallow and hides. Such goods were needed in the North-German towns and, as Danish town laws reveal, they seem to have been exported in rather large quantities from Danish towns. Most of the exports were carried on German ships, but a customs tariff of 1328 from Wismar, for instance, indicates that Danes were expected to arrive with ships filled with ox and goat hides, as well as herring. Grain exports fluctuated substantially during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but were not without importance. Quantities of barley were exported from central Sweden to Lübeck and stable production for the market developed on such southern Danish islands as Lolland, Falster and Møn, which supplied the NorthGerman Baltic towns. The sources also indicate demand from Friesland and Flanders during the 1270s, though this was closely linked to years of crisis and bad harvests. In 1271, for example, there was famine in Flanders and a Danish permit for grain to be exported that year should be seen in the light of a general Danish ban on exports. In this connection, a chronicle reveals that a further crisis unfolded in Friesland, when, in 1272, the local bishop refused to admit Frisians to markets on the River Ems, thereby preventing them, as the chronicler recounts, from obtaining the cash needed to buy grain in Denmark and the Baltic; famine then broke out in areas of Friesland (Schmitz, 1968: 92). What we are witnessing here are the beginnings of the establishment of the later so important grain export route from the Baltic to the Low Countries. All this time, as a consequence of her urbanization and the concentration of the peasants of her western and northern regions on fishing, Norway was becoming a country with a structural need of foreign grain. Consequently, the food supply of both Norway and the Low Countries was severely hit when a Danish-Hanseatic sea blockade was mounted in 1283–1284. 346



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Although an export trade in food was beginning to be established, it is certain that most food was traded locally and regionally. Cattle and grain were bought by itinerant merchants or sold by peasants at the nearest town markets; thirteenth-century sources indeed show us townspeople buying grain and meat on the market square. More and more cattle were needed, as borne out by investigations of bones uncovered in the towns of Haithabu and Schleswig, which show that the inhabitants switched their meat consumption from pork to beef in the period from the tenth and eleventh centuries to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The growing number of farms evidently secured an urban demand for meat, even at a time when the quantity of livestock on individual farms was dwindling. Finds from the early medieval Swedish towns of Skara and Sigtuna similarly point to the inhabitants buying and slaughtering young cattle and lambs from the surrounding area. The earliest towns were thus already leaving their mark on their rural hinterlands: there, the archaeological bone finds of animals of normal slaughtering age are few; in the towns, they are abundant. During a period of rising meat prices, however, the most fundamental problem was of securing adequate supplies of grain to meet the growing urban demand. In the second half of the twelfth century, in the Danish town of Lund (Skåne), we find a baker – one, Thorkild Baker – making an appearance for the first time. Both bakers and butchers were carefully regulated by a law of the town of Schleswig from around 1200, and they are documented as being a presence in Scandinavian towns in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It is clear that most urban households left baking and butchering to professionals. Baking ovens in towns were generally possessed solely by bakers, and townspeople adopted the general European habit of buying bread daily. In Nordic town markets, a more European selection of food was now being found. From the late thirteenth century on, hops for domestic beer were regularly imported from North Germany, together with Lübeck beer, and salt arrived in large quantities from the Lüneburg mines. Spices and wine (mostly Rhenish) were also increasingly available, albeit to a limited group of rich buyers.

11.4  The agro-food chain from c. 1350 to 1750 Storing and preservation Typically, people still stored food in their homes for long periods. In consequence, not only was much production aimed at self-supply, but farms, manors and town houses were necessarily equipped with special storage areas; manors, indeed, had several chambers capable of storing considerable quantities of butter, bread and meat. Around the year 1500, for instance, the stores of the Danish bishop of Roskilde contained, besides grain, malt and hops, about 200 slaughtered pigs, seventy-five slaughtered oxen and about twenty barrels of salted beef, one hundred slaughtered sheep, and quantities of slaughtered poultry. Additionally, there were sixty barrels of butter and, for the fast periods, salted and dried cod and other fish, including eight barrels of salted herring (Kjersgaard, 1978: 29). Such amounts of food were assembled through the seigneurial economy and 347

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to a small degree also circulated back to that economy’s base when served to not only the lord’s own servants, but also to peasants doing boon work at his manor. The massive storage of food was a particular feature of large rural households, but was essential almost everywhere. One had to go to the towns to find a pattern of consumption according to day-to-day requirements. An extraordinary situation, namely the Swedish siege of Copenhagen, 1658–1660, revealed that only the richer burghers of the town possessed food stocks for up to six weeks; most people had to buy their food daily at the market. The need to store food led to the creation of several processes of preservation. In the more northern parts of Scandinavia, fish were often dried, meat was either dried or preserved in sour milk, and grain was milled and baked as hard flat bread. Salt was also used to preserve food. Writing in the 1520s, the Swedish cleric Peder Månsson mentions that, in Sweden, meat was preserved by placing it under stones for three days and then putting it in salt for twelve, whereafter it was allowed to dry in the open air. In Denmark, large numbers of cattle were slaughtered before winter set in and were preserved through smoking or salting; bread, though, was normally freshly baked. Salt is not found naturally in Scandinavia. It could be extracted from sea water through a process of boiling, as was done, for instance, on the Danish island of Læsø from the thirteenth century onwards and on the coasts of Norway, or it could be imported. From the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, salt from the Lüneburg mines in North Germany became dominant in Denmark and in Swedish towns. The most important buyers were the herring fisheries in Skåne, where about one third of exports via Lübeck went, although every household in Denmark seems to have had its share. Demand in Sweden and Norway was limited, because of the drying and souring techniques used there. From the fourteenth century, Lüneburg salt came up against stiff competition from cheaper, imported Atlantic salt: firstly, French baie salt from the Bay of Bourgneuf; and secondly – from the sixteenth century on – salt from the Iberian coast. The result was a dramatical fall in salt prices.

Consumption patterns Individual diets consisted of a combination of preserved food and a limited amount of fresh food. In many places, food was still prepared on the fire set in the middle of the house, although separate kitchens gained a footing during the Middle Ages. Pottery vessels still prevailed in cooking, but the more solid brass pots were becoming more and more common. Swedish and Danish castle accounts that have come down to us from the fourteenth century and later give us an impression of the sort of food consumed at castles in those times and show that it varied substantially over the year. In 1388, at the small Danish castle of Brink on the Jutland west coast, much pork was eaten at feasts and at Christmas; times of fasting meant foregoing pork, lamb and beef in favour of herring, the consumption of which rose eightfold during these periods; on normal days, rye bread, butter, sheep or lamb or beef, herring and beer were served. Descriptions from the sixteenth century onwards similarly tell of the variation in diet between normal days and feastdays, and between summer and winter. In 1692, for example, the critical 348



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Illustration 11.3  St. Joseph shown as peasant, tasting ­porridge from a metal pot on an open fire, c. 1500, fresco in the church of ­Elmelunde, Denmark

English diplomat Robert Molesworth recounted that, in Denmark: ‘The Peasants live on Roots, white Meats, and Rye-bread; seldom tasting fresh Fish, and scarce ever Flesh, unless on some extraordinary Festivals as on St. Martins Eve when each Family in Denmark, without fail, makes merry with a rosted Goose at Supper’. Overall, he noted that: ‘The feeding of the Commonalty generally throughout all Denmark is very mean; the Burghers and Citizens sustaining themselves with Rye-Bread, Salt-flesh, 349

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Stock-fish, Bacon, and very bad Cheese’ (Molesworth, 1694: 10). A comparably negative view of Swedish peasant food and its hard round baked bread ‘with holes in the middle, hanging on stakes under the roof of the living room’ was given by the Dutch writer Justus van Effen who travelled in Sweden in 1719: ‘Only Swedish teeth can chew it’ (Effen, 1742). Both observers were right in stressing that normally the range of food was limited and that fresh food was scarce. On the other hand, the sources abound in descriptions of the rich tables of the few wealthy burghers, of noblemen and of kings, tables laden with venison, fresh fish, oysters, sugar, spices, exotic fruit and wine. It was for the kitchens of these persons that the first printed cook books (appearing in the seventeenth century) were designed. More precise estimates of consumption have been made from early modern accounts and statistical material. Certainly, ordinary people had to dispense a rather large proportion of their money on food: a mid-eighteenth-century Danish family in the provinces seems to have spent about half its income on daily victuals; for the years 1725–1807, it has been established that a group of Norwegian workers were using two-thirds of their income on essential foodstuffs (grain, butter, cheese, meat, fish and beer). On a typical eighteenth-century Norwegian farm, 64 per cent of the farm income went on food. Further, it has been calculated that, in Copenhagen during the 1730–1800 period, daily food consumption amounted to about 3 000 kcal per inhabitant, with a protein content of about 110 grammes. In Sweden, servants on royal domains each had a daily intake of 3 500–3 600 kcal per day during the sixteenth century; from the late seventeenth to the eighteenth century, one group of servants had 3 700–4 200 kcal per day, about twice what poor children received. It may be that agricultural production had difficulty in keeping pace with population growth in the crisis-ridden seventeenth century, an indication of this being the fact that the daily kcal intake of servants on Swedish royal domains fell by one sixth in that century. Another indication in this respect was the falling average height of people, though a picture of a generally rather well-nourished population nevertheless emerges. An investigation into paupers dwelling in four Swedish hospitals during the 1621–1872 period has shown that their normal daily intake of energy was 2 000–2 500 kcal, which was sufficient for their needs; only for the period of war from 1690 to 1720 can a food crisis with inadequate supplies be detected. Those inmates were served rye bread, gruel and porridge prepared from barley and rye, and some beer; cereals formed the basis of their food, which was consequently very low in fat and rich in carbohydrates (70–80 per cent of the energy intake) ( Johansen, 1998; Morell, 1989; Myrdal, 1999: 245–6; Lunden, 2002). Even if it is difficult to measure the development, there are indications that the consumption of meat and animal products increased in Scandinavia after the plagues of 1349–1350. As in other places in ‘carnivorous Europe’, this development seems to have been reversed sometime in the sixteenth or the seventeenth century, there being a new and growing emphasis on cereals. This occurred more particularly on Swedish royal domains, where, in the sixteenth century, the servants obtained 70 per cent of their kcal from grain; in the seventeenth century, that proportion rose to 80–90 per cent (Myrdal, 1999: 245). It is logical broadly to interpret these shifts as consequences 350



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of demographic developments in relation to a relatively inelastic demand for grain, though consumer behaviour should not be underestimated.

Production Changing consumption was mirrored in production. The relative rise in the price of cattle and butter vis-à-vis that of grain – which may also have been triggered by the increased production and sale of Baltic grain – made it natural that there should have been a move in all Nordic countries to increase the breeding of cattle in the period after 1350. Butter production was already considerable in the fourteenth century. The introduction of the plunge churn in the eleventh or twelfth century, together with increased imports of salt, stimulated large-scale production of preserved butter on farms, butter that could then be used as payment of duties and taxes, as well as a trade object. The drop in population in the late fourteenth and the fifteenth century caused fields to be deserted, which in turn permitted better access to grazing and meadows, and resulted in a growing number of cows, sheep and goats. With the increase in the size of individual farms, every peasant had more room for animals and consequently more milk for butter. However, this was a development often quite intentionally prompted by lords. We see an example of this in the 1370s, when a royal bailiff in northern Sjælland stocked the peasant farms of his district, both freehold and tenant-run, with a total of ninety-five cows. Rents were now being levied to a higher degree in butter. On the Danish island of Falster, rents in butter were paid primarily by peasants living in late settlements founded in the fourteenth century, and a general switch from rent payments in grain to payments in butter took place in late medieval Norway. Lords obviously noted the rising price of meat and butter, and met the crisis of the time with investment in improved cattle breeding. This was a general development and it led to the more specialized cattle farming that became increasingly prevalent during the next two centuries. Whereas four to five cows seem to have comprised the stock on an average Danish peasant farm in the early 1400s, there are a fair number of examples by the end of the fifteenth century of herds totalling fifteen cows. The development also prompted late medieval manors in Denmark and Sweden to reduce their grain production and concentrate on the use of meadows and woods for pasture. The size of herds on Danish manors seem to have doubled during the fifteenth century, typically to around thirty head; on some farms, herds were far larger. In 1536, not untypically, sixty cows were kept on the Scanian manor of Flyinge, primarily for milking. During the Late Middle Ages, however, the breeding of beef cattle, oxen, increased and soon overtook dairy production. From the late fifteenth century to the eighteenth, specialized ox-breeding developed in Denmark and Sweden, the weight of these animals growing by at least 30–50 per cent over the period. The basis of ox production was the calves bred from the cows of peasants. Heifers were used as milking cows or slaughtered, whereas bull calves were castrated and fed on the farms until they were four to five years old, being then sold off in autumn to a merchant or the owner of a manor. From around 1520, it became the 351

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practice in Denmark for the animals to be stalled for another winter or two on royal or lordly manors and systematically fattened, so that they could be sold in the spring for the long-distance trade. To a growing extent, large stocks of oxen now began to be bred on Danish manors. Fifty-seven oxen were ‘on fodder’ in 1495 already at the manor of Aagaard, in northern Jutland, and there were many lordly stalls in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with 150 oxen. Soon, too, the lords began ordering their tenants to fatten oxen in the tenants’ own stalls; from the 1520s, moreover, peasants were prohibited from exporting cattle in the autumn and from buying fodder to stall their own cattle; at the same time, exports of salted beef were prohibited. With these measures, the Danish Crown and nobility established a de facto monopoly on the finishing of oxen (the staldøksne) for export, as well as the right to the profit – normally about 20 per cent – on stalling the animals the year before sale. Oxen were normally 5–6 years old when exported (Enemark, 2003). Grain, however, remained the basic agrarian product in all the Nordic countries; furthermore, the cultivated area gradually increased during the sixteenth century and the first part of the seventeenth, at least in Sweden and parts of Denmark. Grain was indeed consumed in large quantities. Even for Norway, according to estimates, it constituted more or less permanently some 60–75 per cent of the source of energy production of farms, cattle products accounting for most of the rest and fish for just a few percent (Lunden, 2002: 148, 264). This was the general picture in Scandinavia, even if productivity was low and most probably decreased from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. The principal explanation for this was that, in the more pronouncedly grain regions, it was always a problem to get sufficient manure; in fact, it was only in such places as the Danish island of Amager, which benefitted from the latrines of the growing capital of Copenhagen, that really high returns could be achieved. For the years from 1610 to 1660, Danish royal manors had yield ratios as low as 1–3 for rye and 1½–3½ for barley. In general, in medieval and early modern Denmark, the grain yield was often three to five times the grain sown and a fourfold return was probably typical for both Denmark and the more fertile areas of Sweden, whereas Norway and less fertile areas in the other countries normally had yields of three times the grain sown. In Sweden, where the sources are best, yields increased during the sixteenth century, a maximum seeming to have been achieved during the 1540s to the 1560s, when harvests of four to six times the amount sown were normal; from the 1620s, per capita grain production fell and stagnated until the early nineteenth century (Myrdal, 1999: 234; Gadd, 2000: 315). After an initial expansion, during which central areas of the country began to use the plough, Sweden from the late seventeenth century on became marked by rising grain prices, indicating that production was not keeping pace with population growth. Unlike Denmark, she was evidently not part of the integrated European grain market of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, in which prices were falling ( Jansson, Palm & Söderberg, 1991). On normal farms in the more fertile areas of Denmark, rye, barley and oats were sown in fairly equal amounts; little importance was given to wheat and buckwheat. In Sweden, rye and, to some degree, oats replaced barley as the demand for knäckebröd (flat rye bread) grew and rye bread baked with yeast became common among Swedish 352



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lords and townspeople. By the mid-sixteenth century, rye constituted one third of the harvest in central Sweden and accounted for even more during the seventeenth. In Norway, the production of oats grew in comparison to that of barley. Buckwheat, which could be used for porridge, appeared in the fourteenth century and became common in Denmark and Sweden during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For their part, hops can be identified in archaeological finds from Denmark and Sweden from at least the thirteenth century. Hopped beer was evidently produced locally, a practice influenced by brewers in North-German towns. Local hop-growing must initially have been limited, however, for large quantities of hops were imported into Denmark in the Late Middle Ages, especially from Mecklenburg, a traffic that kings and the nobility in both Denmark and Sweden attempted to influence. In 1414 and 1442, it was laid down that Swedish peasants should cultivate a certain quantity of hop plants; in 1446 in Denmark, similarly, landowners in Lolland stipulated that all peasants living on the island there were required to cultivate thirty such plants; and in 1522, a nation-wide decree was issued by the king requiring every peasant in the country to plant at least ten. Hops could be marketed, as illustrated by the example of a peasant from a village outside Aabenraa, in Schleswig, who in 1538 sold a quantity of them to the local royal officer for 16 marks and 14 skilling. This sale was characteristic of the niche occupations that became increasingly important for all Nordic peasants in generating cash revenues: those occupations included the cultivation of hemp, flax and fruit (and in the eighteenth century, tobacco), the manufacture of textiles and wood products, and peat cutting; combined with trade and more or less illegal inn-keeping, they formed the basis on which groups of peasants became unusually wealthy. In fact, the best and most productive grain areas of early modern Denmark ranked among the poorest precisely because they inhibited peasants from developing a more complex production profile. From the Middle Ages on, commercial fisheries were vital to Scandinavian peasantries, the fishing of herring and cod being combined productively with farming. However, a crisis characterized by falling prices, changing consumption habits and competition from Holland hit the fisheries in the seventeenth century and lasted well into the eighteenth. In Norway, peasants reacted to the falling prices of dried cod in the seventeenth century by boosting fishing activity; the reaction was the opposite in Denmark, which eventually turned into an almost exclusively agrarian society.

Long-distance trade in cattle and animal products Markets for agricultural food became increasingly important at all levels in all the Nordic countries, even though the seigneurial economy transferred a large share of agricultural production and even though a high degree of autarchy prevailed. To some extent, commercialization was a natural consequence of the growing size of peasant farms after the demographic downturn of the fourteenth century. That greater size provided scope for an increase in production for sale, which continued through the demographic upturn of the next centuries. Important as buyers were the constantly growing urban populations, both in the Scandinavian countries and elsewhere, most 353

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notably in the Low Countries. Small quantities of goods were now being sent even further abroad, as was the case with the forty-six horses and forty-nine sheep shipped in November 1655 from the harbour of Göteborg in Sweden to the West Indies. The Crown, the nobility and towns were leading market agents, though at the same time it was important throughout the period for the relatively strong monarchies of Denmark and Sweden to give some protection to and create trading opportunities for their peasantries. Cattle and cattle products constituted the dynamic export articles. From the fourteenth century, the availability of salt that could be used for conservation permitted the sale of meat, fat and butter to the central Baltic towns, namely the Hanseatic towns. The relatively fall in the price of meat and butter in relation to that of grain testifies to their increasing production. The extent of Norwegian butter exports in late medieval times has probably been overestimated, but the Pfundzollbücher (pound toll registers) of Lübeck indicate that butter was the largest item exported from Sweden in 1368. This was most probably a top year, but Swedish butter continued to be sold in quantity to North Germany; it was shipped from southern and western Sweden to Lübeck and some of it probably reached the markets of Flanders. More important, however, were the exports from Denmark, where the markets of Skåne constituted a centre for all sort of victuals. Lübeck merchants would send their servants to those markets to buy up butter, and traders from Danzig (Gdansk) were active on them buying butter for resale to the Flanders market. Certain late-medieval noblemen of the eastern Danish provinces were also large-scale exporters of butter to Stralsund, Rostock, and Lübeck. Together with butter were other cattle products. From the fourteenth century onwards, Danish producers supplied North-German towns with salted meat, pork, fat, tallow and hides, which arrived in myriads of small sailing vessels, skuder. Some of these were Hanseatic-owned and could contain products bought on the markets of Skåne, but many were also sailed by Danish townsmen or peasants. Around 1400, ships from Denmark were calling in at the harbour of Lübeck every day during the sailing seasons; indeed, the town’s Pfundzollbücher of 1490 show that in one year they brought in more than 60 000 cattle hides. From the thirteenth century, there had been a pattern of towns obtaining their meat supplies from their surrounding area. A first break in this pattern came with the shipping of meat products, the next with the long-distance driving of live steers. In the fifteenth century, Denmark’s exports of live horses still rivalled or exceeded her exports of live cattle, but this changed from around 1450. As early as the first decades of the fifteenth century, 4 000–5 000 head were passing south through Jutland to Lübeck each year and to Hamburg; from the middle of that century, the drives became intensified and routinized. The first exact quantification of cattle exports to the south from Denmark is from 1485, when it was recorded that duty was paid on 13 020 oxen at Gottorp, the customs post through which nearly all Danish and most Schleswig cattle passed. As the importance of the markets of the Low Countries grew, so did the number of cattle exported from Denmark. In 1501, 28 300 head were registered at customs points; in the 1540s, the number reached about 35 000, moving up to 40 000 354



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in the 1550s and 1570s; in the peak years of 1564 and 1565, it was 45 000–46 000 or more. The maximum was reached in 1612, when 52 000 head of cattle passed through Gottorp. From the 1620s onwards, through the rest of the century, the Danish cattle trade experienced a decline, annual exports between 1660 and 1720 amounting to between 17 000 and 20 000 head. The trade declined further during the rest of the eighteenth century. In the fifteenth century most of the steers were sold in autumn to buyers from the North-German Hansa towns. Annual autumn cattle markets were established in the Danish towns of Ribe and Kolding, and merchants from the Low Countries and western-German regions began to attend them from the late fifteenth century on to buy up stock. Over the next fifty years, the complexion of sales was to alter fundamentally. Up to 1485, there was little spring driving of stock, stall-fattened during the winter, but then the pattern began to change. By 1545, 40 per cent of cattle were spring-sold, a percentage that rose to 90 per cent by 1556. The spring-sold oxen were grazed in the marshes of north-western Germany, Oldenburg and Holland, near their final consumers in the towns of the Low Countries and Germany, down to a line stretching from Antwerp to Aachen, and south to Frankfurt-am-Main and Dresden. This indicates not only price integration between foreign markets and Denmark, but also product integration, whereby production was changed to meet the European customer’s requirements; seen from the Danish angle, the cattle were, as it has been put, ‘half-fabricates’. Prices were high and in Denmark many profited from the trade: first and foremost, noblemen and the Crown, as well as cattle dealers from Germany, the Low Countries and Denmark, who, from the middle of the sixteenth century had exclusive control of the export of oxen. One of the richest cattle dealers was Steffen Rode of Copenhagen, who, by the 1630s, was exporting up to 1 600 animals yearly, which he bought from royal and seigneurial domains (Frandsen, 1994). In Sweden, in strong contrast to the Danish situation, a closed market for cattle was created. There was a constant demand for food from central Sweden with its mining areas of Bergslagen and the capital of Stockholm, and a system of cattle drives to these places from the southern Swedish breeding areas, such as Småland and Värmland, had already come into existence in the Late Middle Ages; cross-border trade, with cattle being moved on to Denmark, also existed. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, southbound trade was forbidden by the Crown and most of the animals then went to the mining areas in central Sweden. The number of animals driven the 300–500 km north rose from 6 500 in the mid-sixteenth century to 9 000 by 1620, whereafter it declined (Myrdal & Söderberg, 2002).

The import and export of grain The sixteenth-century change from a trade system centred on the Baltic Hansa towns towards a more Atlantic-based system was not confined to the Danish cattle trade, but was also taking place in the grain trade. Exports of Danish grain to NorthGerman towns in medieval times should not be overestimated: around 1500, most 355

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probably only 5–6 per cent of the total production was sold to German merchants. Most important were the exports from the southern harbours of Denmark and there were also peasants shipping their surplus harvest in small vessels to North Germany. In some years of the fifteenth century, Sweden exported grain to the Danzig market, but in years of bad harvest she imported grain. The towns of Norway, as well as part of her rural population, however, became dependent on continuous supplies of grain from Hansa merchants. Those imports covered roughly 20 per cent of the country’s consumption and were largely in German hands until the seventeenth century, even though prices in Norway – nearly twice as high as in Denmark – were increasingly to tempt Danish exporters. A new phase then occurred in the late fifteenth century and the sixteenth, when skippers from ports in Holland arrived and large flows of grain from the Baltic to western and southern Europe began, with Amsterdam as the major distribution point. Price integration with the Amsterdam market was achieved in Schleswig-Holstein in the 1490s and from then on the Danish grain market came to constitute an integrated market that formed part of the larger north-European market. Some Danish exports also went to England and Scotland, testifying to this being the voyage made by a ship, owned by a Danish nobleman, that sailed to Newcastle in 1545 loaded with grain and returned with coal. The really important change, however, was the shipping of what was a relatively constant surplus of grain to Holland. Grain exports grew so large that local people felt burdened by them, as illustrated by the grain riot that broke out in 1624 in the North Jutland town of Ålborg, where craftsmen stormed the town hall and complained that the grain they needed was being loaded into vessels from Holland. However, even though the value of purchases by tradesmen from Holland from the Danish Crown and noblemen did not come near the value of cattle exports, it certainly mattered. In the sixteenth century, 11 000–13 000 tons or about 8–10 per cent of total Baltic exports were shipped each year to Amsterdam from Denmark; in a peak year, such as 1611, some 18 000 tons were exported. Most of the transport seems to have been undertaken by Danish skippers, but numerous, small ships from the northern part of the Low Countries were also involved in it. The occurrence of larger ships is illustrated by the case of the Vergulden Hobbesack of 120 lasts (one last equals approximately two tons), which an Amsterdam merchant sent in 1606, loaded with salt, to buy grain at several places in Skåne and Sjælland (Maarbjerg, 1995). Lübeck was still of importance as an importer of grain from Denmark, but it was increasingly the Norwegian market that the Danes saw as their pitch. Grain exports from Denmark in general reached a maximum around 1640, but then ran into problems, as the importance of the Baltic grain market dwindled from the mid-seventeenth century on. This led to State creation of a closed Danish-Norwegian grain market, from which foreign merchants –Germans and Dutchmen – were excluded in respect of grain sales to Norway: from 1669, through high customs duties on foreign grain imports to Norway; from 1686, through a ban on imports of barley and malt to Norway from places other than the Kingdom of Denmark. As it turned out, Danish merchants were not able to supply western Norway with sufficient grain and so the customs duties were abolished there. As regards eastern Norway, however, the grain 356



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monopoly granted to Danish merchants in 1735 marked the final step in this process, which was of great benefit to Danish landowners and which created a very high price level for grain in that area. 90 per cent of Danish grain exports now went to Norway and a close trade network was established between the Jutland towns of Ålborg, Århus and Randers, Copenhagen on Sjælland and the Norwegian towns of the Oslo fiord. The situation in Sweden also developed towards a closed system, albeit one on a larger scale. During the sixteenth century and on into the seventeenth, Sweden was a grain-exporting country, export volumes reaching their highest level in the 1620s and 1630s. Parallel with the creation of a military empire during the seventeenth century, however, she began to import grain from her new provinces, closely regulating the trade through customs duties and laws. After 1650, all grain from the Baltic provinces was directed towards Sweden; when, furthermore, Skåne was conquered from Denmark in 1658, its grain sales to German and Holland buyers were stopped, the grain likewise being directed towards filling Swedish needs. It is estimated that this State-created grain flow from the new provinces raised the grain supply of Sweden by one tenth, thereby enabling the victorious armies of the small country to be fed and stabilizing supplies to a population tormented by a series of crop failures in 1695–1698, 1707–1709 and 1739–1741 (Myrdal, 1997).

Dynamic domestic markets The general context of food exchange during the Early Modern Period shifted from integration within relatively open international trade flows towards more closed trading systems. From the seventeenth century on, both cattle and grain products came to circulate more or less through trading within the Nordic countries themselves. This was a logical consequence of not only the growth of the national capitals, combined with demographic stagnation, wars and general-crisis-ridden years, but also – perhaps first and foremost – of the intensification of agrarian production in the Low Countries and – most probably – of maize- and rice-growing expanding in Spain, Portugal and Italy. International demand was disappearing and internal consumption needs were growing. Internally in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, food exchange was necessary between regions with different specializations. A prime example is of regions specialized in grain exchanging products with regions basing their economies on wood products and fishing. The traditional cross-border trade between the east-Danish provinces and Sweden – an expression of that kind of exchange – was banned by sixteenth-century Swedish kings, and the mining areas of central Sweden were thereafter supplied from Sweden’s fertile, grain areas and her wooded, cattle regions. Until 1658, grain exports to Norway, which were to a high degree balanced by timber imports from that country, were paralleled by trade to the east-Danish provinces. From the mid-sixteenth century on, an increasing number of peasants from not only eastern Norway, with Båhuslen, but also from the east-Danish provinces of Halland and Blekinge called at harbours in the central-Danish provinces of Jutland, Fyn and Sjælland, in order to buy grain and sell timber. The peasants and townspeople involved in these exchanges often loaded their north- and east-bound ships with bread, hops, peas, herring, salt and German beer. 357

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Grain was the core good traded, but products like peas were also much in demand, illustrative of which is the fact of a skipper from the south-Danish town of Sakskøbing sailing in 1652 to the tiny port of Hjortahammar in Blekinge with 18 barrels of them. As the proportion of the population living in towns increased from the Late Middle Ages on, so the central focus of food exchange came ever more to be between town and countryside. The Danish town system must be characterized as having become fully developed in the Late Middle Ages, remaining basically stable during the Early Modern Period, but there was growth in the number of towns in both Sweden and Norway during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, reflecting the unabated scope for urbanization. To a considerable extent, the towns may be seen as centres for exchange with and between peasants from specialized regions. From the thirteenth century on, constant supplies of meat and grain were delivered to the market towns and increasingly legislation was created that governed the process. From 1475 in Denmark, for instance, it was forbidden for a peasant to transport slaughtered animals to town, a prohibition that greatly favoured town butchers. More or less mandatory zones were drawn around each town, within which, in principle, it exercised a monopoly over trade and craft; furthermore, no small ports were permitted within the zones. Bitter fights arose between towns about rights in particular areas and some towns expanded at the expense of others. Additionally, zones were not necessary respected, though they increasingly became a fixed reality. At the weekly markets, peasants – especially from the immediate hinterland of the towns – arrived with victuals such as grain and meat; some came, too, to buy German beer or the distilled spirits that became an integral part of drinking culture from the seventeenth century on. Trading at the market was closely regulated by the town council, and this guaranteed its fairness. In Danish towns, for instance, the markets were open exclusively to townspeople until 10 o’clock in the morning, after which they were open to all. From the Middle Ages on, there were generally regulations to ensure fair pricing, especially with regard to bread, and, from 1683 until the nineteenth century, Danish town councils had each year to work out price lists for such foodstuffs as meat, fish and beer. Town customs accounts allow us to see, more particularly, what goods were being brought in, and show clearly, to take an example, that in the 1640s the Swedish town of Örebro imported such goods as grain, malt, hops and to lesser extent turnips, vegetables, berries and fruit. In Norway, local grain production was generally not sufficient to supply the towns. However, other local agricultural products were sold in large amounts to Norwegian towns, a major town like Bergen taking, in 1681, 250 000 litres of milk, thirty tons of butter, two to three tons of cheese, 3 370 head of cattle and 4 300 goats and sheep, plus a quantity of smoked and salted meat. A peasant from the vicinity of the town alone sold 600 litres of butter, which took him sixteen journeys to bring in. Merchants also frequently bought directly from the producer and some of them appeared too enterprising to their fellow townsmen. One such merchant was Peter Frederiksen of the Funen town of Bogense, who, in 1673, was accused of creating a monopoly on the local grain trade, buying up from all the peasants who came to town. 358



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Illustration 11.4  View of  Bergen, c. 1580, engraving by Hieronymus ­Scholeus in Braun/Hogenberg Civitates Orbis Terrarum

Annual fairs in towns or in the countryside, with free access to non-local traders, constituted further channels of supply. At the fairs, such goods as cattle, horses, sheep, pigs and fish were exchanged for manufactured products and flax, hemp, salt and hops; special fairs for geese and honey were also held. There was a little of everything and goods travelled over rather long distances: at the market in Ribe in 1692, for example, were a woman from Odense with herbs and onions, and a man from Assens with a wagonful of apples. However, the most striking feature of the markets for domestic food was the extent to which the needs and demands of the expanding capitals of Stockholm and Copenhagen came increasingly to overlay the normal system of smaller market towns and their hinterlands. From the mid-fourteenth century on, for instance, the Swedish Crown attempted by law to make Stockholm the focus of all trade conducted in northern Sweden and Finland. The laws were implemented in all their force in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and Stockholm achieved a very central position in Swedish trade, supplied by ships from a large area. Further, as mentioned above, the capital benefitted from cattle droves from the southern and western parts of the country, as well as from grain transfers from conquered provinces along the southern shores of the Baltic and from Skåne. For the Danish food trade, one centre was constituted by the Hanseatic towns and especially Lübeck, though a new situation began to materialize during the sixteenth century. Around 1520, the Danish king settled 184 families from Holland on the island 359

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of Amager off Copenhagen to supply the capital with ‘roots and onions’; indeed, those families are known for having brought the carrot to Denmark. At the same time, the king gave another smaller group of people from the northern Low Countries farms on the small island of Bøtø in southern Denmark, just within easy sailing distance of Lübeck. It is difficult to find a better illustration of von Thünen’s inner and intensively cultivated zone around capitals, characterized by the production of vegetables, fruits and fresh milk products, than the specialist groups from Holland situated near those two cities (von Thünen, 1875). From the later sixteenth century onwards, the importance of Lübeck dwindled and marketing to Copenhagen became central for the agricultural producers of most of eastern Denmark. With the international ox-trade experiencing recession from the mid-seventeenth century on, many eastern Danish landowners shifted from beef to dairy cattle; from the dairies, initially manned by specialists from Holland, production could be sold to the capital, where the taste for dairy food was rising. Sales to the capital also became essential for the peasants of Sjælland, so much so, in fact, that complaints arose about many of them selling off more hay and straw than they could actually spare, thereby leaving their farms short of cattle fodder and consequently manure.

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Bibliography Boserup, E. (1965) The conditions of agricultural growth: The economics of agrarian change under population pressure, Chicago. Campbell, Å. (1950) Det svenska brödet. En jämnförande etnologisk-historisk undersökning, Stockholm. Christiansen, P. O. (1996) A manorial world. Lords, peasants and cultural distinctions on a Danish estate 1750–1980, Copenhagen. Dam, P. (2008) Det øvrige vi nyde. Studier af landgilde og landbrugsproduktion i Danmark i 1600-tallet, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Copenhagen. van Effen, J. (1742) Le Misantrope contenant different discours sur le moeurs de siecle, vol. 2, Hague. Enemark, P. (2003) Dansk oksehandel 1450–1550. Fra efterårsmarked til forårsdrivning, vol. 1–2, Aarhus. Frandsen, K.-E. (1988) ‘1536–1720’, in B. Claus (ed.), Det danske landbrugs historie, vol. 2, 1536–1810, Odense, pp. 7–209. Frandsen, K.-E. (1994) Okser på vandring. Produktion og eksport af stude fra Danmark i midten af 1600-tallet, Herning. Gadd, C.-J. (2000) Den agrare revolutionen 1700–1870, Stockholm. Hybel, N. and Poulsen, B. (2008) The Danish resources c. 1000–1550. Growth and recession, Leiden and Boston. Jansson, A., Palm, L.A. and Söderberg, J. (1991) Dagligt bröd i onda tider. Priser och löner i Stockholm och Västsverige 1500–1770, Stockholm. Johansen, H.C. (1998) ‘Food consumption in the pre-industrial Nordic societies’, Scandinavian Economic History Review, vol. 46, pp. 11–23. Johansen, H.C. (2002) Danish population history. 1600–1939, Odense. Kjersgaard, E. (1978) Mad og øl i Danmarks middelalder, Copenhagen. Lilja, S. (1994) ‘The geography of urbanization – Sweden and Finland, c. 1570–1770’, Scandinavian Economic History Review, 42, pp. 235–256. Lunden, K. (1976) Norge under Sverreætten. 1177–1319, Oslo. Lunden, K. (2002) Norges landbrukshistorie, 2, 1350–1814. Fra svartedauden til 17. mai, Oslo. Maarbjerg, J.P. (1995) Scandinavia in the European world-economy ca. 1570–1625. Some local evidence of economic integration, New York. Molesworth, R. (1694) An account of Denmark as it was in the year 1692, London (repr. Copenhagen, 1976). Morell, M. (1989) Studier i den svenska livsmedelkonsumtionens historia. Hospitalshjonens livsmedelkonsumtion 1621–1872, Uppsala. Myrdal, J. (1999) Jordbruket under feodalismen 1000–1700, Det svenska jordbrukets historia, vol. 2, Stockholm. Myrdal, J. (2007) ‘Food, war and crisis: The seventeenth century Swedish empire’, in A. Hornborg, J. R. McNeill and J. Martinez-Alier (eds), Rethinking environmental history. World system history and global environmental change, Lanham, pp. 79–100.

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Myrdal, J. (2010) Befolkning og bebyggelse i Sverige og Norden 1000–1500. En litteraturöversikt och ett försök till jämförande sammanfattning, www.agrarhistoria.se Myrdal, J. (2011) ‘The restructuring of Scandinavian agrarian society in the late middle ages’, in H. Kitsikopoulos (ed.), Agrarian change and crisis in Europe 1200–1500, New York, pp. 204–249. Myrdal, J. and Söderberg, J. (2002) The agrarian economy of sixteenth-century Sweden, Stockholm. Norwegian agricultural history (2004) Trondheim. Porsmose, E. (1988) ‘Middelalder, o. 1000–1536’, in B. Claus (ed.), Det danske landbrugs historie, vol. 1, Odense, pp. 205–417. Poulsen, B. (1997) ‘Agricultural technology in medieval Denmark’, in G. Astill and J. Langdon (eds), Medieval farming and technology. The impact of agricultural change in Northwest Europe, Leiden, pp. 115–145. ‘Rigsthula’ (trans. 1997 by U. Dronke) The poetic Edda, vol. 2, Mythological poems, pp. 162–173. Scmitz, H.-J.(1968) Faktoren der Preisbildung für Getreide und Wein in der Zeit von 800 bis 1350, Stuttgart. Thünen, J. H. von (1875) Der isolirte Staat in Beziehung auf Landwirtschaft und Nationalökonomie (3. ed.), Berlin.

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Illustration 12.1  Cattle in the streets of Ribe, Denmark, c. 1910, photo

12 Scandinavia, 1750–2000 Søren Bitsch Christensen, Hilde Sandvik and Mogens R. Nissen For the period under consideration, Scandinavia forms a particularly interesting case from an agro-food-market perspective, because the point of departure and subsequent developments in the three principal countries of the region were very different. Geographically, there is an important difference between the three, which had a major impact on agriculture and the countryside, a difference that lies in Denmark being close to the German and English markets, unlike Sweden and Norway. Furthermore, the regional differences in Denmark are relatively small, whereas they are significant in both Norway and Sweden. In Denmark, the arable land and climate are fairly uniform, and all agricultural activity is conducted relatively close to larger or smaller urban communities. This is far from the case in the other countries. From the Late Middle Ages on, Danish agriculture was already remarkably export-oriented, even if, during the Early Modern Period, it became more oriented towards domestic markets, whereas the Swedish and Norwegian agrarian ‘combination economy’ continued to focus on domestic markets until late in the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth century.

12.1 Between the traditional agro-food economy and modernization, 1750–1870 Population, urbanization and transport Within the Kingdom of Denmark, the period from 1750 to 1870 was marked by a phase of real population growth. From the end of the eighteenth century, death rates fell, whereas birth rates remained relatively high. Totalling approximately 800 000 in 1769, the population grew to 929 000 in 1801, to 1 289 000 in 1840 and to 1 785 000 in 1870. Best estimates indicate that, between 1820 and 1870, gross national income in fixed prices rose by 158 per cent and the population by 63 per cent. The growth in income probably began around 1800. Denmark remained a predominantly agrarian society, despite a slight expansion in the industrial sector from the 1830s on. The primary sector as a whole even accounted for a higher proportion of the gross national product (GNP) calculated for the 1820–1870 period, its share rising from around to 41 per cent to approximately 46 per cent. Over that same period, the share of trade doubled from an initial level of about 4 per cent. There was, however, a decline in the share of the sector that included peasant handicrafts and the home-production of small articles for market: peasants concentrated more on producing agricultural products – a fact that testifies to the growing importance of the agro-food market (Maddison, 1991: 194–242; Hyldtoft, 1999: 69–70). 365

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map 12  Scandinavia, 1750–2000

State Boundaries Rivers

0

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Similar growth occurred in Norway and Sweden, where the population doubled between 1750 and 1850 from 700 000 to 1 500 000 and from 1 800 000 to 3 500 000 respectively. As in Denmark, the growing number of inhabitants created a class of landless crofters, a development that played a role in the process towards a division of trades and labour, although this was counteracted by the slow pace of technological progress and a growing market involvement of peasant economies in such sectors as the fish trade, timber sales and textile manufacture. During the eighteenth century and until the beginning of industrialization in the middle of the nineteenth, the Danish town system was extraordinarily stable, the urbanization ratio holding steady at 20–21 per cent in the census years 1769 and 1801, rising to 22.4 per cent in 1855 and to 24.8 per cent in 1870. Almost all Danish urban settlements were chartered towns, called købstæder (market towns), most of them were of medieval origin. Market town charters included various degrees of control over trade with the hinterland: most common was a twomile protection zone and an exclusive right to keep harbour facilities (Christensen, 2008: 54–70); craft trade, too, was by and large a market town privilege. There were also comparatively many towns: approximately seventy-one, a number that hardly changed before 1870. Most of these towns were small, their population level outside Copenhagen averaging 1 100 in 1769; the majority were located in the vicinity of the sea. There were only a few large towns, and these had advanced and specialized functions, examples being Elsinore, where the Sound Dues were paid, and Ålborg, with its large export trade in fish and agricultural products. On the other hand, as capital of a realm that included Schleswig, Holstein, Norway (with Iceland and Greenland) and overseas colonies, Copenhagen grew steadily throughout the period and pulled the town system of the Kingdom increasingly in the direction of a primate urban system. In 1769, Copenhagen had 80 000 inhabitants, in 1801 a little more than 100 000, and in 1870 almost 200 000. Although most provincial Danish market towns had almost identical trade privileges, one should not completely overlook the economic strength of individual towns. Calculations on the basis of the 1845 census and the hartkorn (a tax on estimated productivity) figure for 1844 show that there was no statistical correlation between the size of towns and the production capacity of their surrounding area, or between the population of towns and that of the surrounding area. This means that the urbanrural relationship was to some extent flexible and dynamic. Running parallel to the growth of Copenhagen was the approximately 10 per cent population expansion enjoyed by the provincial towns during the period from 1787 to 1801. Concurrently, Danish agriculture was subjected to sweeping agrarian reforms aimed at commercializing the peasant class through land ownership and a significant increase in the cultivated acreage and grain production. During the subsequent years from 1801 to 1840, provincial towns grew at a faster rate than the capital and rural areas, a development that corresponded to the upswing in exports of rural products from mainly provincial harbours in the years before 1840. In 1857, the market towns lost their economic privileges, enabling trade to be conducted freely in the countryside, gate duties having been removed in 1850–52. 367

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In some respects, urban development in the other Nordic countries was more advanced than in Denmark. In the largest Norwegian towns, for instance, gate duties were abolished in the 1820s, some thirty years earlier than in Denmark. The Norwegian and Swedish urbanization ratios were also growing, but remained fundamentally considerably lower than the Danish, amounting to no more than 10–15 per cent, even including the smallest town-like settlements such as the Norwegian ladestedene, the growth of which was promoted by the Norwegian State after the 1830s. After the dissolution of the Danish-Norwegian union in 1814, Christiania became the capital of Norway, its population rising from 10 000 in 1800 to 50 000 around 1850; the other Norwegian towns experienced slower growth. The comparative figures for the population of Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, were 76 000 in 1800 and 93 000 in 1850. The food chain of the northernmost regions was closely connected to sea transport and could be long. One can take the Lofoten fisheries in Norway as an example. In January, men from small farms along the western coast sailed to the Lofoten Islands and fished for cod for several weeks. The catch was left there for the remainder of the winter to dry in the wind, the men sailing home. They returned in June, packed the dried fish in their ships, sailed the long haul down to Bergen and sold the fish to their creditor or merchant in exchange for grain, which the merchant had imported from the Baltic and Denmark. In July, with some tobacco and equipment for the next year’s fishing, the men sailed home. Their round trip each year totalled about 2 000 km or 200 Danish miles. The grain had probably been transported about the same distance, too (Nedkvintne, 1988). In Denmark, land transport was of growing importance. Between 1764 and 1861, a network of main roads based on the model of the French chaussées was built; roads were so bad previously that they were rather an obstacle to trade. The new main roads were at first built around the hub of Copenhagen, building being extended to the rest of the country through an ordinance of 1793, supplemented by a revision in 1841. It is unlikely that the network of roads was built initially to transport goods over long distances; rather, the purpose was to promote the turnover of people and post at inns, staging posts and hotels. The transport of sold goods between rural areas and towns in the local vicinity was only to a limited extent over the new main roads, more important here being the smaller roads; these were greatly improved after the introduction of local government around 1840. Railways were built mostly on State initiative; the network was rapidly extended in the 1860s and favoured the established urban centres on the CopenhagenFunen-East Jutland axis. This reflected a belief in the benefits of continuing integration of the capital and the economic core centres of the province and – via Jutland – with Germany. Before 1864, however, there was little understanding of the value of combining the railway with a shipping line from the west coast of Jutland to England.

Diet of urban and rural dwellers Overall in Denmark, the diet of both rural and urban dwellers remained based on domestic products throughout the whole of the period under review; the only imported foodstuffs of major importance were coffee, sugar, tea, tobacco, salt, spices and, to a less extent, rice. Hence, domestic agriculture was the predominant 368



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supplier of food to Danish households, if one counts ‘cliff fish’ (salted and dried fish from Norway) as domestic food. Danish kitchen technology did not change significantly over the period; at least, changes did not affect market patterns. The open-fire was still the archetypal piece of kitchen equipment. Meat had to be preserved carefully. Ham and pork were either salted or dried by the peasants themselves, and the rest of the home-produced meat was made into sausages; this was a female occupation, as were the dairying activities. Rye and barley were stored in lofts, primitive techniques being used for their winnowing. Only the largest estates and merchants had more advanced grain drying facilities and then only after 1820. During the eighteenth century, early iron installations were taken into use in affluent town houses, as the open fire came to be enclosed within iron walls, presenting a sort of early stove. Proper iron-cast stoves did not come into regular use until after 1850. During the eighteenth century, iron ovens were exported from Norway, and from the 1730s an iron monopoly was established to secure markets for Norwegian iron products. Danish iron foundries were first founded in the late 1760s in Copenhagen and northern Sjælland, but did not spread to the rest of the country until the 1830s and 1840s. One of their most sold articles was the cast-iron oven, which, from 1850, almost always incorporated a water boiler and a baking oven. However, the full consequences of the new technology on consumption were not reached until the transformation of Danish agriculture after 1870, when milk, cheese, butter, fresh meat and eggs came to be produced and consumed on a scale never known before. In the course of the 1750–1870 period, Danish society by and large took a definitive step from a subsistence to a consumer society. Hans Christian Johansen defines a consumer society as a society in which the great majority of the population enjoys a level of purchasing power that is permanently higher than the level required for subsistence, and he has argued that Denmark became a consumer society some time shortly before 1800, possibly a few decades before Norway and Sweden; Finland and Iceland followed suit only after 1850. The principal indicator for this is that, from then on, poor harvests no longer influenced death rates: in other words, food had become abundant. The most noticeable effect of this was the fall in expenditure on foodstuffs as a percentage of total expenditure ( Johansen, 1998). In the eighteenth century, 66 per cent of ordinary Danes’ consumption expenditure went on food. Seemingly comparable figures indicate that, in the 1840s, this declined to 61 per cent, with normal foodstuffs accounting for 52 per cent of total private consumption and beverages and tobacco 9 per cent. Grain cultivation was the backbone of Danish economic growth during the period and the subject of a constant debate about agrarian reforms, market regulations and the peasant economy. Grain was also the most important consumer crop and was traded in barrels, one barrel holding 139.4 litres. The 1750–1870 period witnessed growth in both cereal and animal output, not least in grain, and it is fair to ask whether more food also appeared on the dinner tables of the Danes. It seems it did, the best-known example being Copenhagen. Grain was the cheapest source of calories. Calculated on the basis of taxed imports, average consumption per capita of all cereal products except barley rose from 2.28 barrels in 1750 to 3.3 barrels in 1790 and 1800 (Thestrup, 1971). Contemporary economists and social writers agree on average consumption 369

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of about 3.75 barrels for the entire country, a little less at the start of the period and a little more at the end of it. Grain was also used for brewing beer and distilling spirits. It seems that beer lost ground to spirits, but this is hard to calculate, as it was customary up to the beginning of the nineteenth century to add large amounts of beer to spirits. Around 1840, almost half a barrel of grain per capita was still being used in spirit distillation. Behind these averages figures lies the fact that years of failed crops became very rare in the nineteenth century, so that actual consumption rose by more than the figures tell. The average also hides the fact that social differences became more pronounced as farmers got richer, both in real terms and compared to the growing class of landless labourers and cottagers. Around 1800, a Danish agricultural-topographical writer summarized the nationwide rural diet as follows. Everywhere, rye bread and porridge were the main constituents, but fish, soups of bone, and meat belonged to the daily diet, as well. Vegetables were rare, except for cabbage. Porridge was made of different cereals, which partly reflected regional differences in cultivation, but wheat, barley and sometimes buckwheat were regularly used. Everywhere, porridge was served several times a day with cold milk and home-brewed beer, replaced on Sundays, however, by sweet porridge cooked with milk and served with sweet, light ale. Bread was eaten between main meals and as a supplement to the porridge. Pork was more or less the only meat in the everyday diet, either as bacon with bread, as cooked pork with potatoes, turnips or cabbage or as fat on bread (Slettebo, 1963: 41–64). Locally, old habits were strong. On Sjælland, herring was more preferred than in most other places, and mutton and lamb must have been a regular part of the diet, since, around 1840, there were at least four times as many sheep as pigs nationwide. Some eating habits changed, though, and the outline of what most Danes now think of as the traditional diet can be perceived. The open sandwich with cheese and sausages is found in the food schemes of certain social institutions around 1810; likewise, beer made from grain was increasingly supplemented by coffee after about 1840. The interaction between changing food demand and production is very clear in the case of potatoes and peas. Potatoes were promoted by rationalistic priests in all the Nordic countries, as exemplified by the Norwegian Peder Herzberg who in 1761 published a book ‘for peasants in Norway about the very useful earth-fruit potato’. German immigrants introduced potatoes into Denmark in the middle of the eighteenth century, but these were not commonly cultivated before the first decades of the nineteenth, when they were increasingly seen as a supplement to porridge and bread. Peas were a traditional crop, but became much more common after 1800. In Denmark, it was said that potatoes were the primary food of the poor during the recession years of 1821 and 1822, which saw failed grain harvests; indeed, the broad diffusion of potato cultivation was even considered the single most important constituent of agricultural progress. A factor that potatoes and peas had in common was that they were incorporated into the new vekseldrift (crop rotation), which advocated the cultivation of nitrogenous and soil-improving crops on fallow land. With agricultural output growing at that time, more animals and better and more abundant crops in the agricultural product mix also meant relatively more bread, 370



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porridge, meat, milk and butter on tables. However, the improved Danish diet was not everywhere in evidence and neither the urban working class nor the rural underclass consumed any significant amounts of beef and veal, which were otherwise becoming more common fare (Hyldtoft, 1999: 130–131). Bakers, slaughterers and millers were not allowed to conduct their trade in the countryside. Consequently, all farms had their own ovens; in the towns, on the other hand, it was customary to rent ovens at bakers or in other households. Baking was a trade organized in guilds and always subject to careful scrutiny by town officials, at least in Copenhagen and other major towns. The number of bakers was fixed, as were bread prices. Milling was likewise traditionally a strongly regulated trade; like the market-town trades as a whole, it was deregulated around the middle of the nineteenth century. In the process, the trade of baker became established in the countryside and by 1870 there were more than five times as many rural bakers as in 1840; during the intervening period, the number of slaughterers doubled. On the one hand, this is an obvious sign of diminishing self-subsistence among rural households and as such it is an aspect of the modernization of rural life; on the other hand, it was a sign that the increasing rural class of labourers and cottagers was being left without proper household facilities to cook and bake large items of their own food (Hyldtoft, 1999: 68). In the wide, waste landscapes of Norway and Sweden, the diet had its own characteristics. Conservation was vital and food was generally dried or salted. Fish from the high north were dried in the wind, fish from the south were salted in barrels – as was meat – and dried; corn was dried and milk was conserved as cheese and butter. Households had thus to turn their hands to a multiplicity of tasks, several of which were done only once or twice a year. Women would bake thin round loaves of crispy flat bread in such quantities that it would do for half a year, sometimes a whole year. Cows normally gave milk only during the summer, so making butter and cheese was women’s summer work. With production often taking place on mountain farms, there was both a seasonal and a regional use of land. Autumn was a time of harvesting, slaughtering and meat preservation, as well as brewing for Christmas, which could be either men’s or women’s work, depending on the place. A winter task was the weaving of linen, hemp and woollen textiles. With spring came newborn lambs and calves. Both women’s and men’s tasks were thus subject to strict time allocation (Sogner, 1985). Washing clothes and cleaning the house were very seldom done weekly – more likely monthly – and the dirt or stone floors were swept rather than washed. Some tasks of course were everyday tasks, such as cooking porridge, the staple for almost every meal. Seasonal variation was an important factor in time allocation so far north. In summer, animals – properly guarded by a little boy or girl – found their own food. During the winter, fodder had to be distributed, albeit eked out to make it last longer, and heavy loads of water had to be carried to the barn. That was hard work, as a cow needed 30 litres of water daily and water had to be transported by bucket or sledge; it was a long time before it became commonplace for water to be piped to the barn (Avdem, 1984). The Norwegian and Swedish diet clearly illustrates the impact of time allocation on food production. It was a not very fancy diet, but well suited for the busy, hard-working 371

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woman; it consisted of small slices of well-preserved food – salted and dried meat or fish –served with the daily porridge. Routine and continuity were obvious requirements in cooking and food preservation. When new crops were introduced, they became incorporated into the traditional diet: potatoes, for example, were found after a time to be very suitable for making flat bread, as indeed were peas; in alcohol distillation, potatoes proved to be a substitute for grain. Most illustrative of the spread of the potato is that, by 1830, the plant was accounting for 15 per cent of the average Norwegian’s food energy. It would be quite wrong to say that there was little other food in Sweden and Norway than the dried and salted. Clergymen prized the ptarmigan, hare, deer and cloudberries offered them by congregations. British tourists discovering the climbing attractions of the Norwegian mountains recorded lively descriptions of the inhabitants hunting and gathering, activities very different in purpose from their own sporting pastimes. Time was thus also allocated to picking berries, hunting birds and animals, and fishing in lakes and rivers, whereby variety was given to the diet of ordinary people, too. There was also a taste for colonial products, and even Swedish and Norwegian peasants spent part of their small incomes on tobacco and coffee. About one kilo of tobacco per person a year was being imported legally to western Norway in the mid-eighteenth century (Dyrvik, 1979: 120)1; there was also an unknown amount of smuggled tobacco. Other products such as coffee, sugar and tea were luxury products in the countryside, but were in widespread use in urban centres from the mid-eighteenth century on: indeed, inventories from 1750 from towns in western Sweden mention coffee- and tea-making equipment as frequently as contemporary inventories from English towns. In the countryside, however, it was not until the 1850s that coffee and tea became more common, although there were differences from district to district (Ahlberger, 1997: 125). Around 1800, some rural districts in eastern Norway were using four kilos of coffee a year per household, about the same amount as at the end of the century. It was gentlemen farmers and wealthy households in the countryside who introduced such colonial products as coffee, sugar, rice and chocolate (Tranberg, 1993: 320; Søby, 1996: 51). In Sweden, peddlers were often the distributors of small goods and colonial wares; in Norway, trade in such goods was in principle restricted to the towns and a few merchants in the countryside, until trade in the countryside was liberalized from about 1842 (Lundqvist, 2008). The fact nevertheless remained that the long coasts made it difficult to control the import of colonial products.

Production and land reforms in Denmark In the middle of the eighteenth century, the productive area in Denmark (i.e. leaving forests and moors aside) was split on an 80:20 ratio between areas for pasture and hay, and areas for cereal production. From a market perspective, however, cereal production was arguably the more important. By 1840, the cultivation of moor- and heathland had increased the area under cereals by 50 per cent and, despite the reclamation of new land, the area devoted to pasture was reduced by 40 per cent. Furthermore, even improvements in fertilizing, crops and land treatment did not change the fact 372



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that pasture areas remained relatively much less productive than cereal areas ( Jensen, 2007b: 58–60). The importance of grain is seen from a statement by a Danish nobleman and civil servant, who in 1763 said that grain at all times gave peasants the bulk of the money they needed for taxes (Christensen, 2001: 199). Market town privileges had a striking effect on the grain trade before the trade’s liberalization in the nineteenth century. To varying degrees, the same can be said of the trade in most other agricultural products. It was indeed to the market towns and Copenhagen that the majority of rural products were sent. The eighteenth century saw a stricter exercise of market towns’ control over the sale of rural products, the formal conditions of which had already been laid down in Late Medieval and Early Modern town charters and trade laws. The State favoured this control and, at a lower level, merchants and local authorities contributed by defending their local rights against other towns, foreign merchants and obstinate peasants. This ultimately resulted in a relatively fair distribution of food between towns, dominant centres such as Copenhagen and Ålborg excepted, which can be ascribed both to the system of chartered rights and to the transport economy. The generally uncompetitive trade pattern was also visible in the way grain was traded. The pricing of grain was primarily regulated by quantity, with barrels as the preferred unit. A much-used practice of estates, the leading suppliers to markets, was to enter into agreements with merchants at prices fixed well before harvest, which reflected the uncertainty of the harvest (Christensen, 2008: 52–68). The principal content of the Danish reforms in the late eighteenth century concerned the transformation of the status of approximately two-thirds of the Kingdom’s 55 000 peasants from copyholder subject to an estate to free peasant farmer. This was accompanied by an udskiftning (reorganization approximating to enclosure) of the village land owned by estates and under common cultivation into individual cultivation of parcels in private property. The reorganization went ahead rapidly from the 1770s and continued unabated until 1795, when it began to decline. In the process, a large part of the estate domain land was parcelled out as well. The reforms created a middle class of economically solid farmers who, as entrepreneurs, became the initiators of an agricultural re-orientation towards a market economy. Simultaneously with the reforms came a general increase in agricultural output, which raises the fundamental question of whether this was an intended result and, if so, whether the reforms could even be seen as a response to development of the agro-food market. Initially, the growth in output can be explained by the reduction of adverse factors, such as poor drainage, surface cultivation, short growing seasons, and low-quality seed. That apart, various forms of kobbelbrug (advanced crop rotation) or more advanced forms of three-field rotation gave better crop rotation and better work flow, which in turn created a more efficient utilization of the workforce. This also resulted in the cultivation of heath- and moorland, better cultivation of fallow strips and a generally improved treatment of the soil, not least with a much higher use of nitrogenous clover and higher-yielding cereal seeds. Climatically induced crop failure occurred in 1756–58, 1770–72 and in a number of years during the 1780s. According to a contemporary statistician, 1799/1800 saw the start of a rather general failure of the rye crop in Denmark that lasted for about ten years; this was supposedly caused by a combination 373

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Table 12.1 Cereal harvest output factor in the Kingdom of Denmark, c. 1750–1865

Harvest output

1750

1800

1817/19

1838

1847

1865

5–6

7

10.2

10–11

12.1

17

Sources: Christensen, 2001: 164; Jensen, 2007a: 139.

of fungus epidemics and inadequate cultivation methods. Thereafter, however, crop failure ceased to be a recurrent event. In conclusion, grain – barley, rye, oats and to a lesser extent wheat – continued to be the single most important cash crop in ‘the new farming system’. Accordingly, Danish historians have emphasized rising European grain prices as the main stimulus for the increasing harvest output. Hans Christian Johansen has stated that, although population growth and agricultural growth took place simultaneously, they were not in fact interconnected. Reduced mortality did not cause a deterioration of living standards and then prompt more intensive cultivation. On the contrary, the rising, general European-food-price trend made investing more labour hours more cost-effective ( Johansen, 1988). Higher European grain prices undoubtedly had a positive influence on the speed of agricultural reform during the 1780–1810 period, and it was in the 1780s that udskiftning (enclosures) got really under way among the Danish peasantry. Fully reliable agricultural statistics for Denmark are not available for the years prior to 1870. For the first half of the nineteenth century, we have to settle for estimates by qualified professionals; hardly any statistics at all exist for the latter half of the eighteenth. It is nevertheless clear that there was high growth (Table 12.1). For the 1750–1870 period as a whole, it has been estimated that there was a 100 per cent increase in the land cultivated for cereals and a 70 per cent increase in the yield per hectare. Hence, there was a substantial rise in area productivity. The population also grew, and between 1750 and 1850 total per capita cereal output rose from about 9 barrels to around 12 barrels , climbing more steeply thereafter.

The traditional ‘combination economy’ of Sweden and Norway New agricultural methods were also introduced in Sweden and Norway, and included ploughs with iron blades and threshing machines (Valen-Sendstad, 1964; Gadd, 2000: 245–248). In Sweden, the enclosure of common land was carried out from the second half of eighteenth century, leading to intensified grain production. However, this period also saw a regression in agricultural methods, with people in the south-western part of Norway, for instance, reverting to spading their land to get better yields. Reformers in Norway were critical of the widespread, peasant ‘combination economy’ and advised more specialization and more men’s work in agriculture. The slowness in the adoption of such processes has been explained by a lack of market integration, whereby there could be no guarantee that specialization was an appropriate way to handle risk (Lunden, 2002). 374



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An economy that combined many niches generally remained much more important in these countries than in Denmark. In Sweden, many peasant women made textiles for sale and there was generally large-scale production of wooden products (Gadd, 1997). In Norway, a large proportion of which lies within the Arctic Circle, only 3 per cent of the land is cultivable and agriculture was a risky way of life; people in the north carved out their living by combining agriculture and husbandry with fishing, mining or forestry. The combination took place at household level and was based on a gender division of work. While men stayed away for weeks and months during the winter, engaged in commercial fishing or forestry, women took responsibility for the farms. From about 1730, new salting techniques made it possible for commercial fisheries along the western coast of Norway to be exploited during the summer months, too, and men therefore stayed away for long periods during the spring and summer, as well. Income from men’s work in the export sector was used mainly to buy grain and pay taxes. Historians see this combination of incomes from different sourses as the key to Norwegian economic growth in the period (Dyrvik et al., 1979: 246–247). But an absence of specialization was also an important household strategy for economic security. The notion ‘combination economy’ explains puzzles in the past, one of which was that, on small farms along the western coast of Norway, grain was grown, summer after summer, high above the Arctic Circle, even if it was regularly frozen and even if cereals could be purchased in Trondheim and Bergen. The answer, of course, lies in the handling of risk. In the first place, a household with at least four different sources of income could count on their not all failing: incomes from fisheries could be used to buy grain if the home-grown corn froze; if the cow died, it was possible to survive on fish. Second, there is the gender perspective in the family life cycle: in the north, sowing was women’s work; there was always a risk that husbands and sons would fail to return from sea and without them there would be no export trade income to buy grain with; consequently small-scale farming meant security for a widowed family. The combination economy at household level is the key to understanding the agrofood-market chain, as the statistics show. Norwegian statistics indicate that, for 1821, costal farms required only 0,1 per cent of a male-work year, but a whole female work year. In contrast, inland cereal production required 3 male-work years and 3 femalework years (Tveite, 1988).

The Danish-Norwegian grain trade With regard to international trade, Norway was the main exporter of commodities in the Danish-Norwegian union, with timber, fish and metals being exported to harbours around the North Sea. The bulk of food exports was from Norway and consisted of fish. The Kingdom of Denmark, by comparison, had few export commodities. In terms of the union as a whole, this was not necessarily a problem. The union’s two components, Denmark (with the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein) and Norway, complemented each other, and there was active pursuit of mercantilist policies aimed at protecting the internal market. Through means of toll barriers and import prohibitions, Norwegian 375

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Figure 12.2 Grain exports from Denmark to Norway and other countries, from 1730–40 to 1843–47

Source: Christensen, 2001: 160.

glass, iron, timber and fish were assured of a market in Denmark, the main concession to Denmark and Danish estate owners and merchants being the so-called ‘Grain Monopoly’ of 1735, which prohibited the import of foreign grain into Denmark and Southern Norway. Danish and Norwegian research has produced general agreement that the monopoly provided assistance to Danish agriculture and estate owners during times of economic depression (Herstad, 2000: 98–127). Did the monopoly work according to intentions? It meant that foreign grain could be imported only when the production in Denmark, Schleswig and Holstein was insufficient. It is beyond doubt that, after 1760, the task of producing sufficient supplies was too great for the combined efforts of the three. In times of crisis, thus, the market was opened for imports of foreign grain, which in practice meant via the Baltic ports. On the whole, however, Danish grain exports grew throughout the eighteenth century (Figure 12.2); if the most extreme years are disregarded, there was a clear upward trend. If this was the intention of the Grain Monopoly, then it was successful.1 1

The figures come from a number of sources from the central administration. The most important single source is the annex to the memorandum in which the abolition of the Grain Monopoly was suggested in 1788: Rigsarkivet (The National Archives) in Copenhagen, Finanskommissioner 1745–1788, no 20, Den Overordentlige Finanskommission af 2. Maj 1788: Forestilling om Kornhandelen i Danmark og Norge af 26. Maj 1788. For full references: Christensen, 2001: annex 3.

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The State grain administration had a crucial impact on the well-being of the population, on commerce and on agriculture, and even played a major role in the political relationship between Danes and Norwegians, eventually becoming a factor in the growing Norwegian ‘home rule’ movement after the 1770s. At particularly bad times, Norway was visited by veritable famines, as in the years 1740–1743, 1770–1773, 1782–1783, 1789 and 1800–1803. In the worst instances, a demographic crisis ensued. All these things together resulted in the grain trade becoming one of the most important State arenas for institutional building. In critical times, the State simply took over large parts of the markets by more or less confiscating surplus grain stocks, as happened in 1740–43, 1762 and partially in 1771–73. During the major crisis of 1771–73, however, some early, rather small, grain stocks proved totally inadequate and the subsequent reaction was for the monopoly to be suspended until 1780. It was in fact reinstated in 1774 and, as a counterweight, a large buffer consisting of 30 000 and at least 80 000 barrels of grain in Copenhagen and Norway respectively was created. This ambitious ­initiative functioned for only a limited period and subsequently the traditional practice of suspending the Grain Monopoly during times of crisis was reintroduced. It was only gradually that the permanent nature of the problem began to sink in, with the conviction growing that the grain warehouses created for use in poor harvest years also inhibited private trade in good years, the so-called ‘crowding out’ effect. The result was that the Grain Monopoly did not achieve its ultimate goal of securing sufficient and stable supplies. Expressed in economic terms, the monopoly caused large transaction costs to be inflicted upon private merchants, as the changing rules made trade uncertain (Christensen, 2001). The liberalization of many European grain markets after about 1760 was followed closely by Danish opinion. In 1788, the Grain Monopoly was repealed and the import of grain into Denmark-Norway was again permitted. The complex body of grain legislation started with an ordinance of 26 May 1788, which allowed the free import of grain on payment of a small duty, the free export of grain without duty and the establishment of bonded warehouses in port towns. In that same year, an enormous, government, grain warehouse with sorting and drying facilities was established, the idea being that the grain from the warehouse could be used as an investment object through the issuing of warehousing certificates, and that, in this way, trade could be transformed from a commodity trade to a capitalistic exchange trade. Other important steps towards the commercialization of rural society were taken at the same time, with 1791 seeing the peasants’ grain tax for the benefit of the Royal coffers being replaced with a money tax in return for the State putting its grain requirements out to public tender and, finally, grain being allowed to be traded according to weight and not just volume. The liberalization of the grain trade was accompanied by a similar removal of the old regulations governing the cattle trade, which now made this a fully legal trade for peasants and merchants, not just for estate owners.

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This epic decision was the result of a conflation of interests. The most important were the State’s finances, Norwegian opinion and the desire to create fresh growth by setting up a system of incentives, as grain trade policy was considered to be the principal instrument for the extension of the right of free enterprise and for State intervention in the economy. Of the grain trade laws, that of 1791 permitting grain to be traded by weight took the longest to become fully implemented. State agencies and quasi-State agencies such as the Royal Danish Society of Agriculture and the Society of Copenhagen Wholesale Dealers debated for several decades whether permission should become prescription. The State took a great step forward in this respect in 1818 when a specific weight was prescribed for the grain to be supplied by successful bidders in the open tendering process. By 1830, Copenhagen wholesalers could state that grain in the export trade was being traded almost exclusively on the basis of weight. The transition had been achieved. In passing, it can be pointed out that the weight of a barrel of rye increased by approximately 11 per cent between 1790 and 1850 and of a barrel of barley by about as much as 20 per cent between 1800 and 1850. Less successful was the government grain warehouse, which was in full function as a true State grain bank for only 10–15 years, its activities ceasing completely in the 1830s when private merchants rented the facilities (Christensen, 2001). As expected, Danish grain exports to Norway declined in the immediate aftermath of the repeal of the Grain Monopoly. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, they had rebounded to above pre-monopoly levels and for the next half century they held steady at about 500 000 barrels per year. From 1827, exports to England and to a lesser degree other western European countries increased rapidly, and the growth had such effect on agriculture and society that the 1830–1875 period is often simply called ‘The Grain Sales Period’. Annual Danish grain exports totalled 2 735 076 barrels in the years from 1844 to 1847, as compared to only 729 000 barrels seventy years earlier. The predominant market was England. Danish grain had had a poor reputation in the eighteenth century, and the agricultural reform was accompanied by a long-running debate about how to improve its quality to make it saleable on international markets, consideration being given not only to better crops, tax systems and cultivation methods, but also and importantly to trade systems and storing technology. In the 1830s and 1840s, granaries with modern facilities became common in Danish towns with the biggest trade in grain and on individual estates. Previously, grain had been stored exclusively in barns and in merchants’ stores, the technology used being very simple and including primitive winnowing machines and the use of shovels to throw the grain into the air to dry it. The new, basic means was a grain-drying machine, the preferred model being one from Stralsund, which could dry 90–100 barrels of rye in twenty-four hours. The total capacity of those modern granaries at the beginning of the 1840s can be estimated at c. 939 000 barrels (Christensen, 2001: 727–729). The standardization of grain quality was a precondition for the greater international integration of the peasant economy, as grain could now be sold as a speculative item on the basis of certain classifications. 378



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Illustration 12.2  Livestock market in Randers, Jutland, 1861, printed from an ­engraving in wood in Illustreret Tidende, nr 110, 3 November 1861

Regional specialization to supply Danish and overseas households Apart from Copenhagen, there was no domestic or foreign town in the second half of the eighteenth century that had the buying power or provided the necessary demand to shape very specialized or even trans-regional production in the Danish countryside. Nevertheless, natural resources and nearness to the markets of Copenhagen and Germany obviously created some regional specialization, most notably in respect of Jutland cattle and fish. Regional specialization in crops can be the outcome of transport economies. Some estates shipped their own products, but these were no different to what was being produced by all or most other estates. Seaborne trade had been a regular part of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century peasant economy, but as the State – particularly from the last decades of the 1680s – began to clamp down on most harbours outside the towns, many peasants withdrew from it. However, some remained active and kept their trading rights, using their vessels to sail with grain from north-western Jutland chiefly to places like southern Norway. Some peasants also sailed from southern Funen, Lolland and Falster, taking fruit to Copenhagen and horses and fruit to northern Germany (Christensen, 2008: 53–56). Fish were most consumed in western and northern Jutland, on whose coastlines herring, cod and plaice were landed, surplus catch mostly being sold to Copenhagen. But domestic fishing was marginal to total consumption: catches were too small and the price differential was not favourable to long-distance trade. Hence, more than fourfifths of the herring consumed in Denmark during the second half of the eighteenth century was imported. Cattle had been the major Danish export item in the seventeenth century, but the trade lost importance after 1660. In the eighteenth century, it was subject to heavy regulation, which gave estate owners complete control of the market and the sole right to export. At that time, the trade was concentrated in Jutland, initially Western Jutland. In 1768, 7 000–8 000 head of cattle were exported, though this number 379

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does not take account of the large number of animals smuggled over the small River Kongeå (the border between the Kingdom and Schleswig). The other large market was Copenhagen. It has been estimated that annual sales of live cattle to the capital between 1760 and 1765 amounted to 7 477 bullocks, 1 409 cows and 5 224 calves, all primarily from the Sjælland estates. Little research has been carried out on the provisioning of the capital, especially in the nineteenth century, but it is clear that land use on Sjælland to some extent reflected the proximity of this major, urban consumer centre. Feeding the growing capital had become such a crucial matter that deregulation of the town privileges had already occurred here in the eighteenth century, putting Copenhagen several decades ahead of the rest of the country in this respect. At that time, peasants within an inner zone of one to two Danish miles (7.5–15 km) around the capital specialized in supplying Copenhagen with daily foodstuffs and similar items, such as fish, milk, peat, oatmeal, and straw. More distant zones specialized in the poultry trade. Deregulation was taken further in the 1790s, with Sjælland peasants now being allowed to buy calves, sheep, lambs and other animals in the countryside, provided they sold them in Copenhagen. Copenhagen was also the centre of a large supply district for slaughtered animals, smoked meat and live lambs. This trade did not really involve market towns, but was in the hands of the Sjælland estates and peasants, with a small input from other parts of the country. For the 1760–65 period, its annual value can be estimated at 370 516 rigsdaler, as against 130 000–162 000 rigsdaler for the annual value of the live cattle supplied to the capital. By comparison, supplies of grain for Copenhagen in 1760 totalled 249 000 barrels, with a value of about half a million rigsdaler. Until well into the nineteenth century, dairies in Denmark were considered inferior to foreign and in particular Holstein dairies, whose cheese appeared regularly on the tables of Copenhagen and other urban elites. In Denmark, the selling of ordinary cheese to nearby market towns generated an important income for most peasant households. Market towns also got fresh milk from their surrounding areas. Copenhagen was the biggest domestic market and dairy produce came there from the whole country, including the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein: for the 1760–1765 period, the value of the annual supplies of butter is estimated at 32 150 rigsdaler; for the 1763–1771 period, the value of the annual supplies of cheese from Jutland, Funen and Sjælland at 2 000, 500 and 20 000 rigsdaler respectively.2 By the 1830s, the introduction of better cattle breeds, better and regular feeding in the winter and better attention to hygiene had resulted in higher milk output. At the same time, dairying shifted from a female to a male occupation and acquired a more professional status, at first on the estates and later on bigger farms. Strict quality control resulted by the 1850s in Danish butter winning a good reputation on the London market, a reputation that was to be capitalized on by the next generation of Danish peasants. These later export sales were dominated by the peasants’ own sales organizations, but the initial product innovation had been achieved by private merchants (Dybdahl, 1946–47). 2

More details in respect of these figures can be found in Christensen, 2006.

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By 1870, a general picture had emerged of an agriculture professionalized and with a greater incorporation of what chemistry had to offer. Essential in this regard was both the opening of the Landbohøjskolen (Agricultural College) in 1858 and the fact that the Royal Danish Agricultural Society was supplemented by a number of local peasants’ organizations (Bjørn, 1988: 120–30, 166–80).

Local market trade and town hierarchy In Denmark, the weekly market on the town marketplace was the traditional means of selling food products to the townspeople, although the sale of certain foodstuffs on these markets appears to have diminished in large parts of the country around 1750. The southern Funen town of Faaborg provides a good example of this, the town authorities reporting in 1790 that there had been no marketplace trade in grain, butter and meat for years, as merchants had been buying up the entire stock of these products from peasants and estates, using supplier contracts and commission agents. In contrast with the sale of grain, that of vegetables, fish, poultry and certain sorts of meat was more likely to take place on marketplaces. The situation in Copenhagen was different, since the higher turnover of foodstuffs gave scope for a specialized and regular open-air market activity. A list from 1778 shows that: On Amagertorv (Amager Square), side by side with pork hawkers, ‘garden women’ and sellers of various woollen and other cloth articles, inhabitants of the nearby isle of Amager sold vegetables and milk. In the Højbrostræde: lemons (probably imported). In the Færgestræde, fruit and venison. On Fisketorvet: freshwater and salted fish. On Gammel Torv: grain, fruit and ‘food’. On Halmtorvet: hay and straw. On Nytorv: slaughtered and other food, brought by peasants from the villages of Rødovre, Valby and Hvidovre. On Skidentorvet: peat and firewood. After the middle of the nineteenth century, the weekly open-air markets expanded in many towns, due probably to both the rise in town populations and the increasing bulk trade in grain and animal products, which made the trade in vegetables, fruit and similar perishable foodstuffs less attractive to wholesale dealers and thus left more scope for smaller tradesmen. The sale of potatoes was part of this revival of marketplace trade. As mentioned above, potatoes were slowly incorporated into new crop rotation systems from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards. In this second phase, peasants seem to have taken up small-scale potato cultivation with the intention of marketing their crop in nearby towns. Potatoes became thus one of the few, new cash crops. A national census of 1837 revealed clearly that it was on Sjælland, near Copenhagen, that potatoes were cultivated most in Denmark (Ax, 2008). But potato growing appeared to be possible as well in the climate and soil conditions of the sandy regions of Jutland. Gradually, potatoes came to be cultivated nationwide. The seasonal fairs developed quite differently and grew in number throughout the entire period. Towns were permitted to have one or more of them and they were features of the countryside, too. There were fairs for livestock and fairs for daily commodities, as 381

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well as a limited number of specialized fairs for wool, to mention one example. In the Kingdom of Denmark and Schleswig there were, in 1760, 260 fairs on 95 fairgrounds and, in 1860, 681 fairs on 182 fairgrounds. On Sjælland and the other major islands, the fairs were primarily located in the market towns, whereas, in Jutland, a lot more of them were found in rural areas, a clear indication of the greater distances between major towns in this more thinly inhabited part of the country. The increase in numbers was constant, but was most pronounced in Jutland and Schleswig in the years from 1790 to 1860 (Degn, 2001: 148–149). By the second quarter of the nineteenth century, rising grain production and integration into international food markets had resulted in the agro-food market gaining a hitherto unseen influence on the town hierarchy. Danish historian Per Boje’s studies of the 1820–1845 period indeed show that the biggest towns had taken over a disproportionately large share of the agro-food trade in their regions. In Jutland, Ålborg, Århus, Horsens and Randers accounted for about 21 per cent of the urban population in that province, but between 47 and 69 per cent of grain exports. The picture was the same everywhere. As Boje points out, this town hierarchy was brought about by the use, already widespread in 1820, of commission trade in exports of grain. The concentration of the grain trade in the largest towns was accompanied during the c. 1820–1843 period by similar concentrations for other export goods, namely butter, skins, hides, meat and bacon, now being exported mainly from Jutland. There was in fact a clear geographic pattern, with the customs posts of Hjerting and Ringkøbing dominating the export of animal products from the Jutland west coast, and Randers dominating exports from east Jutland. The towns on Funen had a very equal distribution of exports, while those on Sjælland, Lolland and Falster to a very great extent concentrated their exports on grain and directed their other sales to Copenhagen. For its part, the capital consistently accounted for 15–25 per cent of animal product exports (Boje, 1977: 70–100). As indicated, this regional specialization in the export of animal products reflected differences in the geography of the provinces, but the tendency of individual towns to dominate was also a clear sign of a more pronounced trade hierarchy. Just like most other European countries, Denmark was subject to gradual liberalization and deregulation of her economic life after the 1790s. Some of these changes can be ascribed to the need to feed the growing population and the desire to create economic turnover in areas distant from towns; others can best be explained as the result of an ideological endorsement of liberalism and as adaptation to increasing international demand. The result was an extension of commercial activities in the countryside and a gradual undermining of the trading privileges of the towns. In short, it can be said that, from around 1815 on, the countryside became much more closely monitored by market agents; it was in that year that the above-mentioned right of the Sjælland peasants to buy livestock in the countryside was extended to the whole country. Until 1845, only buyers acting on behalf of town merchants were allowed to trade in the countryside, provided sales were not made in Copenhagen; after that date, they were free to sell in all towns. This did not mean that the town privileges were abolished; all goods still had to be brought to town and sold from there. From 1856 onwards, people who were not town citizens were permitted to set up as hawkers in the countryside, 382



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but no nearer to towns than one Danish mile; moreover, as hawkers, they had to buy their goods in the towns, too (Boje, 1977: 247–74). The 1840 census showed that there were no fewer than 1 100 such traders in the countryside, of whom the vast majority were small shopkeepers, the others trading in livestock or home-made stockings and other woollen products (Hyldtoft, 1999: 83). A similar process took place in Norway, leading during the 1839–1842 period to the abolition of the old trade and craft privileges of towns. In Denmark, this final step was not taken until 1857, when the now democratically elected Danish government decided, with effect from 1862, to abolish the privileges of the market town guilds and the last remnants of towns’ monopoly on business and trade. Some consideration was shown for towns in the concession whereby certain businesses were prohibited from being conducted within a distance of one and a half Danish miles (11.3 km) of a town and whereby no trade was permitted to be practised within half a Danish mile of one. When these restrictions were completely abolished in 1920, the last remnants of the market towns’ legal dominance also disappeared.

12. 2.  Scandinavia in the modern market system, 1870–2000 Scandinavian agriculture changed substantially in the 1870–2000 period, due very much to evolving conditions on local, regional, national and international markets determining its course and the products that it produced. Developments in the agrofood chain nevertheless varied from country to country, a contributory factor here being the difference in political regime. For long periods in Sweden and Norway, tariff protection, trade barriers and subsidies to specific parts of the production side of agriculture were in place; in Denmark, farmers had to a greater extent to cope with international competition. This section focuses especially on the development of Danish agriculture, but also takes in development in the southern part of Sweden and Norway. The particular focus is because the development Danish agriculture underwent during this period was unique, even within the international context. The period is divided into three sub-periods, each with its important features. The emphasis is on the long term; shortterm fluctuations and the specific circumstances during the World Wars should be considered in relation to longer-term developments.

1870–1914 This was a sub-period very particularly marked by change in agriculture and agricultural production, evident especially in Denmark, less evident in the other Scandinavian countries. These few decades have often been termed a time of ‘reorganization’ of or ‘change of system’ in Danish agriculture, because of the extensive restructuring of agriculture during them. The beginning of this process, around 1875, coincided with the end of the ‘Grain Sales Period’, during which, from the 1830s on, farmers had sold mainly cereals – up to half their grain harvest – and to a lesser extent, butter and live cattle. The goods 383

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were sold on the local market or to merchants, who then re-sold them. What was not sent for sale was used for farm production and household requirements. Most farms and smallholdings in all three countries were virtually self-sufficient and purchased very little. This situation changed very markedly over the last decades of the 1800s and the beginning of the next century. In the course of those three or four decades, especially Danish farming switched from extensive field use to intensive breeding farms, and from a relatively extensive self-sufficiency economy to a market-oriented monetary economy. During the 1870s, cereal prices on the international market began to decline, resulting in falling farm incomes; butter and pork prices decreased, too. With the cost of wages and mortgage interest rates rising, many farmers had financial problems. The decline in the price of agricultural commodities continued until the mid-1890s, the latter half of the 1880s seeing a wave of forced sales sweeping through agriculture. Around 10 per cent of all sales of farms in Denmark during 1885–1889 were forced sales (Bjørn, 1988a: 236). The crisis prompted Danish farmers to consider alternatives. Through the 1870s, estate owners and the largest farmers earned almost 50 per cent more for their butter than smallholders, because of its higher quality. This was the underlying situation when farmers began to join together and create co-operative dairies across the country. The first was established in Hjedding in West Jutland in 1882, and explosive growth in their numbers followed over the following decades. By 1894, already, more than 900 co-operative dairies had been set up in Denmark; between 1894 and 1909 approximately 1 150 new co-operatives opened their doors (Bjørn, 1988a: 372). However, the very first co-operative dairies in Scandinavia had in fact been established a few years earlier in Sweden and Norway. As explained further, the effect of establishment was different in each of the three countries. In Denmark, the co-operative movement became a characteristic of agricultural development from the late 1800s. The idea behind the co-operative enterprise was in itself simple. A number of farmers joined forces and created a company. In the case of manufacturing companies – primarily dairies and slaughterhouses, but also sugar factories, potato flour factories and others – production machinery was purchased and qualified workers were hired to process the agricultural output. From the beginning, this form of organization required all farmers to be personally liable for the company’s operations. Besides payment for the products they delivered, farmers received a share of company profits in proportion to those deliveries, the farmers supplying the most taking the largest share of the profits. A company’s highest authority was the annual meeting, within which all members had equal voting rights, regardless of how much they delivered. It was the dairies that were the core of the Danish co-operative movement, though several other types of company were also involved, including the co-operative slaughterhouses, the other crucial arm of the movement, which began to be set up in most major Danish cities from the 1890s on – by 1914, a total of forty-three had been established. A number of co-operative purchasing associations were also set up, which ensured farmers of a cheap supply of good quality feed and fertilizer, and machinery. Consumer co-operatives, too, rose up across the country; these having huge importance for Danish households, being where, from the late nineteenth century onwards, a significant proportion of Danish housewives purchased their consumer goods. 384



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In Danish history, the years around 1900 are often referred to as ‘the co-operative period’. The co-operative movement is seen as significant for the country, both from outside and from the perspective of Danish self-understanding; indeed, the democratic form of the co-operative organizational model is considered as being part of Danish national identity. In this respect, it is important to mention that the spread of co-operatives took place simultaneously with the development of parliamentarianism. In both parliamentarianism and co-operativism, major population groups – workers and farmers – united in opposition to the nobility and the bourgeoisie. Co-operatives protected, so to speak, both farmers and workers against capitalism and free markets, and in Denmark there remains a tendency to perceive this as something unequivocally positive. With co-operative dairies, it became possible to improve the quality of butter at smaller and medium-sized farms, whose sale price for the product consequently increased, despite the general fall in the prices of agricultural products. The explosive increase in the number of dairy co-operatives is an illustration of the immediate economic success they brought to their members. That immediate economic success was the great strength of the co-operative movement, the community ideology having to be regarded more as a positive consequence. It is illusory to think that farmers would have continued establishing co-operatives had economic performance not been so positive. This is borne out by the situation in both Norway and Sweden, where the number of co-operatives did not show the same growth as in Denmark: because most areas were relatively thinly populated, cost-effective local co-operative dairies and slaughterhouses could be established in only relatively few places (Morell, 2001: 101–103 and 108; Gjerdåker, 2002: 261–262). With the establishment of dairies, milk production became the main source of earnings for the members of the dairy co-operatives, although sales of pork quickly became almost as important for farmers. Within a few years, this situation resulted in a complete reorganization of farm operations. Between 1881 and 1914 in Denmark, the number of dairy cows rose by almost 50 per cent and the number of pigs by some 375 per cent. There was some synergy between milk and pig production on farms, as farmers received such ‘waste products’ as buttermilk and whey from dairies, an important feed supplement for pigs. At the same time, field production was changed, the cultivation of fodder crops being increased and that of bread grains and cash crops reduced; on the islands of Fyn and Lolland-Falster, sugar beet was cultivated, which was of local and regional importance. Total agricultural production increased dramatically during this period. Between 1861 and 1912, land improvement works, drainage, moor cultivation etc. served to expand the cultivated area in Denmark by nearly one quarter; Between 1870 and 1914, the yield per hectare for cereals went up by more than 25 per cent, and for root crops such as potatoes and fodder by c. 60 per cent (Bjørn, 1988a: 253–265). Quantitatively and qualitatively improved Danish feed production was supplemented by the purchase of grain and protein concentrates from abroad, absolutely essential with animal production rising sharply and animal productivity increasing correspondingly. The annual fat production per dairy cow doubled from about 2 000 kg fat in 1880 to 4 000 kg in 1914 ( Jensen, 2007a: 240). Within just a few decades, this development in agricultural production brought Danish agriculture to a position among Europe’s most efficient. 385

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The structural transformation of Danish agriculture is to be understood as the result of the interplay between eight favourable features. The first of these was that, by the late nineteenth century, the enclosure of Danish farms had almost been completed and nearly all farmers and smallholders were freeholders or copyholders. Among the farmers, thus, there was a strong incentive to increase farm production and efficiency. In addition, Danish farms were relatively large, compared to the small holdings in the other Scandinavian countries. The second was that all Danish farmers received a basic education, so they could read, write and calculate. Many farmers were also educated at so-called Folkehøjskoler, which provided specific adult education in Denmark during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; some farmers went to the agricultural colleges established since the 1860s and 1870s. Gradually, too, a proportion of the largest farm owners came to be educated at the agricultural university, established in Copenhagen in 1856. The relatively high level of education among farmers was important; it was the precondition for that readiness to shift production from bread grains to dairy and meat production. They needed to be able to read to understand the information from farmers’ organizations and consultants. The third favourable feature was that the construction of new tools and machinery became important, both for labour-saving and for better preparation of the soil as a means of increasing crop yields. New machinery such as centrifuges was also essential in the processing companies – the dairies and the slaughterhouses. In the 1870s, the Swedish company Alfa Laval began to develop a cream separator, which proved of major importance for the development of dairies all over Europe in the late nineteenth century. The fourth feature was the substantial contribution of science to agricultural progress; improvement of plants and animals was combined with experiments in seed- and feed-planning, both the results of the experiments and new methods being quickly disseminated to farmers through professional journals, lectures and a growing network of agricultural consultants. The fifth was the development of the transport infrastructure, which opened up new markets. Local roads were upgraded and the Danish rail network was significantly expanded, making it possible for agricultural products to be carried longer distances overland. Moreover, ports were expanded and new steamship connections made it possible to increase the traffic of goods to and from Britain. The sixth was the increasing demand for food, brought about by demographic growth, industrialization and urbanization in Denmark and throughout Europe. In 1870, the Danish population was some 1.8 million; by 1916, it had risen to 2.9 million. Over the same period the population of Copenhagen climbed from 200 000 to almost 600 000. This resulted in growing demand not only for cheap food, such as bread, but at the same time for pork and beef, and for processed food, such as butter, which became the cornerstones of Danish agricultural production. The seventh feature was the key role played by agricultural policy. In Denmark, no import taxes were imposed on cereals and no price subsidies were given to domestic grain production. It was left to the farmers themselves to adjust to market conditions. This liberal attitude prompted farmers to turn away from grain with its declining prices and to increase livestock production. The eighth and last concerned the great efforts made by the Danish authorities to 386



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Illustration 12.3  Alfa-Laval cream separators, ­Stockholm, 1900, cover of a publicity folder in German

act in partnership with co-operatives and farmers’ organizations to enhance and guarantee the quality of agricultural products via a comprehensive system of quality control, in order to bolster rapidly growing exports to Britain. From the early 1900s on, ‘Lurpak’ (a Danish brand of butter) and ‘Danish Bacon’ became high-quality labels on the UK market. This ensured that, for many decades, Danish farmers gained higher prices in Britain than farmers from other countries (arguments based on Bjørn, 1988a: 193–383). 387

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The decades before the First World War were also characterized by major changes in the division of labour in the countryside. Caring for and milking cows was formerly a part of women’s work, because it was women who processed milk for butter and cheese for the household and partially for sale in the local market. But the reorganization of production changed this picture. With the production and sale of milk becoming the main source of income on most farms, stable work became an important part of men’s work, as did the care of pigs. At the same, with farms being supplied with butter, cheese and buttermilk from the local dairy, the role of women in farm work declined. Kitchen and scullery equipment and activities also changed. The time-consuming domestic production of beer and bread, as well as of salted and smoked meat gradually gave way to processing in (co-operative) breweries, bakeries and meat-product factories, and to more and more processed products being purchased in consumer co-operatives and shops. On the other hand, food preservation with sugar became a popular occupation among women, the introduction of sugar beet during the 1870s resulting in sugar no longer being reserved to the richest members of society. The rising standard of living of farmers from the 1890s onwards was reflected in a new life style and a number of new practices. In the iron oven stove – which penetrated into common households around the turn of the century – biscuits and cakes were baked instead of waffles, which women had previously baked over the open fire. Furthermore, chopped meat dishes such as meatballs, liver paste and Danish pork sausages became common as the meat mincer replaced the knife around the turn of the century as a tool to fine-cut fresh meat. In fact, many of the dishes that count as ‘typical’ of Danish cuisine were created in the decades around 1900. This development was linked thus to the production of large quantities of butter and meat of relatively high and uniform quality, to the introduction of the above-mentioned new tools and, as more processed food was bought, to the increasing investment in time spent in gardening, growing vegetables, herbs, fruit and berries, which became an integral part of many dishes. For their part, workers in Copenhagen and other cities consumed more and more pre-cooked foods such as liver paste and sausages, which they put on dark bread and ate as a packed lunch during the lunch-break at factories, this reflecting both a higher standard of living and new eating habits (Morell, 1997; Morell, 2001: 89–93; Bjørn, 1999; Kayser Nielsen, 2003).

1914–1950 During the First World War, all three Scandinavian countries were neutral. During the Second, only Sweden remained neutral, Denmark and Norway being occupied by German forces. In their destruction, both wars had a long-lasting impact on agricultural developments. Before the outbreak of the First World War, about two-thirds of Danish agricultural output was exported, mainly to Britain. Agricultural co-operatives were spread across Denmark, and during the first decades of the twentieth century a major effort was made by their leaders to bring them together in a unified movement, the central management thereby, as it were, neutralizing the power of the free market. With monopolization or cartel formation, co-operative dairies and slaughterhouses 388



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tried to avoid competition on price and quality. This was important to boost Danish exports, but it was also important to Danish consumers, who had to pay relatively high food prices. Conditions in Sweden and Norway were different. There, pre-war, production had changed to a lesser degree, and a smaller share of production had been sold. A significant part of the farm’s production continued to be used as feed and to supply the farm’s own household needs. Sales of agricultural products were almost exclusively for the domestic market, and only a very small proportion was exported. In Norway, subsidies to domestic grain production were introduced from the 1870s onwards, farmers in the south-east of the country benefiting particularly from this. In the southern part of Sweden, agricultural development followed a similar path to that in Denmark, and there was a relatively higher level of grain production and a correspondingly lower level of livestock production. In Sweden and Norway, the processing industry developed less extensively and co-operative enterprises were not such a feature as they were in Denmark. In Denmark, the relatively high level of animal production was based on imported feed and fertilizers. During both world wars, Denmark was blockaded and imports fell. This resulted in a sharp decline in livestock production, particularly of pork, an illustration that the increasing intensification of agricultural production can result in increased vulnerability. The wars were also a reminder of the importance that the production of food has for a country. Suddenly there was an actual risk that domestic food production could hardly meet the needs of the population. The problem was worst for the urban population, which was entirely dependent on the purchase of food. In this respect, it is worth remembering that, during the 1916–1950 period, the Danish population rose from 2.9 million to 4.3 million, and the population in the Copenhagen area from 600 000 to around 1 million. Prices of grain rose sharply at the respective outbreak of war in 1914 and 1939, because few farmers wanted to sell grain. Prices of other agricultural goods soon followed suit, and this afflicted particularly the urban population. During both wars, a wide range of regulatory and pricing laws were introduced, intended partly to safeguard the urban food supply and partly to prevent uncontrollable price increases. At the core of this legislation were the rules regarding the distribution of bread and feed grains, and the imposition at the turn of the year 1914–1915 and in September 1939 respectively of maximum prices for grain. When the Second World War broke out and Denmark was occupied, this latter in April 1940, the Danish authorities employed the experience of the First World War with legislation and built a large administrative apparatus to verify that the rules were respected. In both wars, especially the first, the authorities’ management and control prompted great dissatisfaction among farmers and the leaders of the agricultural organizations, who believed that they were being unfairly forced to supply a large share of the cereal harvest at low prices. But, at the same time, there were different interests at play among farmers. The grain-selling farmers – primarily the owners of larger farms on the islands – felt that grain prices were too low and that the deposit requirement was too high, whereas the farmers who bought grain and feed for livestock production – i.e. who mainly ran smaller farms – believed that grain prices were too high and that they were being allotted too little compulsorily 389

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delivered grain (Bjørn, 1988b: 178; Nissen, 2005: 64–100). One reason for the lesser degree of dissatisfaction among farmers during the Second World War was that the leaders of the agricultural organizations accepted and promulgated the necessity of management and control. Despite the decline in production, the regulations and price control, most Danish farmers made good profits during both wars. Moreover, the level of the population’s consumption of such plant foods as bread and grits, as well as butter, meat and eggs, suffered no significant reduction in comparison to levels before and after the wars. This picture was also evident in the other Scandinavian countries, albeit that the consumption of such animal foods as butter and meat declined among the urban population in Norway. Yet, once the First World War had ended, there was an almost naive desire among farmers and agricultural leaders for rapid deregulation and a rapid transition to free markets. In 1920, the largest Danish opposition party – the liberal agrarian party Venstre – well supported by agricultural leaders, made objections to the government’s continuing regulatory policy; when, in the spring of that year, Venstre was in government, it introduced a series of forced liberalization measures. Generally, the 1920s were a decade in which attempts were made to restore free food markets. At the same time, a tough financial policy was implemented, whereby the value of the Danish currency increased significantly within just a few years. This had strong impact on many farmers, in that the cash value of their mortgage debt increased by 30–40 per cent during these years. From the winter of 1920–1921 onwards, prices of grain and feed dropped dramatically, making it more profitable to purchase grain and feed, and increase animal production. The same happened in many other European countries, resulting in an oversupply of pork, which put pressure on prices on the British market. In the mid-1920s, Germany began regularly to implement various forms of import protection, which hit Danish exports of cattle to that country. 1929–1930 saw Germany starting to increase duties on imports of cattle and butter, which resulted in Danish agricultural exports to Germany virtually ceasing. Farmers in Southern Jutland were exceptionally hard hit. Britain, on the other hand, continued her traditional freetrade policy until 1932 and Danish exports of pork and butter increased, even after the world crisis of 1929–1930. Indeed, Danish exports of pork to Britain went up by some 50 per cent in the 1929–1932 period, but this was hardly able to offset the halving of the price of pork and butter during the same period. The crisis became critical in the autumn of 1932, when the British government moved to restrict food imports from Denmark and to give preference to Canada, Australia and New Zealand, as British dominions, in respect of food exports to the UK market, a move that hit particularly Danish and Dutch farmers ( Just, 1992: 82–101). This was the immediate cause for the Danish agricultural organizations represented on the Agricultural Council of Denmark asking the government to support a very comprehensive regulation of Danish agricultural production and exports, which resulted in the free market for processed food actually being suspended from 1932–1933 to 1950. The government transferred authority to control and regulate production and exports to the agricultural organizations and co-operatives, and the consequence was a curb 390



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Illustration 12.4  The customs walls in Europe, a caricature from the Danish satyrical ­yearbook Blæksprutten, 1931

on the production of pork and butter, whose prices increased again from the spring of 1933. Central control of agricultural production was such a success that the leadership of the agricultural organizations jibbed at removal of their export monopoly in the late 1940s, because they believed that increased competition would lead to lower prices for farmers. That leadership thus obtained different market policies after the two wars: fast deregulation and removal of state control in the years after the first; retention, after the second, of the system that gave them a monopoly on the production and marketing of animal produce, a monopoly sanctioned for nearly twenty years by successive governments. It was particularly Danish consumers that came to pay for that monopoly, whose aim was to ensure good prices for agricultural produce, albeit at the cost of loading retail prices on the domestic market, although relatively few subsidies were given to agriculture in this period ( Just, 1992: 103–121). 391

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In the early 1930s, there was a heated debate about which type of trade policy should be pursued in Denmark. The industrial lobbies were keen to set up various kinds of import tariff to protect Danish industries against foreign competition. This view was supported by the Conservative Party and sections of the Social Democrats, with the trade unions being equally interested in protecting Danish workplaces. Among the farmers, the grain producers wanted tariff protection to be implemented, but the leadership of the Agricultural Council and Venstre were strongly opposed to a protectionist policy, because it would boomerang on Danish agricultural exports: if Denmark imposed import restrictions, other countries would stop importing agricultural products from Denmark. This contrasts with the policy of Norway and Sweden, both of which implemented a protection policy for their own farmers – particularly the grain producers – and subsidized farmers. This illustrates the persistent difference between the Scandinavian countries in respect of agriculture; Danish agriculture focused on exporting most of its production; Swedish and Norwegian agriculture was oriented towards the domestic market. Illustrated, too, is the economic and political importance of agriculture. In the first half of the twentieth century, some 80 per cent of the total value of Danish exports was accounted for by agricultural products. In Norway and Sweden, the enormous impact that the agricultural sector had on local and regional employment meant that there was huge interest in the protection of agriculture there. The German occupation of Denmark and Norway on 9 April 1940 created distinct problems for both countries. Danish agriculture in particular experienced both difficulties and opportunities. It was impossible to import grain, feed and fertilizers, and Denmark was cut off completely from her main export market in Britain; instead, however, there was a large market for Danish food in Germany and German-controlled countries. During the Second World War, Denmark was a very special case among German-occupied countries, and agriculture illustrates this clearly. During the occupation, most Danish farmers made good profits. Although production declined sharply, relatively good harvests in four of the five years of occupation caused a much smaller decline than was feared in the summer of 1940. One consequence was that Denmark was able to export substantial quantities of butter, pork and beef to Nazi Germany and that, in the latter half of the war, these supplies covered the needs of the urban population in Germany for no less than one or two months a year. Food from Denmark was also sent to other occupied countries, particularly Norway and Finland, and a substantial proportion of the food requirement for the German troops in Denmark and Norway was met by Danish produce. More importantly, Danish agricultural produce secured for the population of Denmark a significantly higher food ration than was enjoyed in any other German-occupied country; indeed, butter and meat rations in Denmark in 1944–1945 were nearly three times higher than in Germany (Nissen, 2005: 194–268). A start had been made with negotiations between the British authorities and the Danish ambassador in London, even before the German capitulation, the purpose being to achieve consensus on what should happen after the war, when Germany was defeated. The British authorities wanted to ensure food supplies from Denmark to England and the British-controlled areas in Germany at the lowest possible prices. 392



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On the Danish side, officials were particularly interested in supplies of raw materials for both agriculture and industry. In the weeks following the liberation of Denmark, trade negotiations took place in London. It was said more or less directly that Denmark had a moral obligation after the war to support the allied powers, a standpoint that was not shared by the Danish agricultural organizations and civil servants, who feared lower food rations in Denmark. In early August 1945, a trade agreement was signed by the Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs, John Christmas Møller, without involving the Agricultural Council. He accepted prices for exports to England that were approximately 25 per cent below the prices wanted by the negotiators of the agricultural organizations. This created severe political difficulties, but renegotiation of trade agreements in 1946 and subsequent years resulted in the prices of Danish agricultural exports to the UK increasing significantly (Nissen, 2005: 288–309). In the immediate post-war years, profits made during the war enabled increasing investments to be made on all Danish farms, regardless of size. In 1945–1947, investment was primarily in building- and land-improvement, as this could be done without significant imports of materials. From the harvest year of 1947–1948 on, however, ever-larger investments were made in equipment and machinery, particularly on medium-scale and large farms. In 1949, it was stated that ‘... at the biggest farms, significant investments have been made in continuing mechanization ...’, just as it was observed the following year that ‘... there is a real improvement of the equipment, and in this way production has been rationalized’ (Nissen, 2004: 282–315). The Second World War and the occupation of Denmark led, thus, to a postponement of the rationalization process that had begun during the 1930s, including the acquisition of electric milking machines and electric fences, as well as, on some farms, tractors, threshing machines, binders and other machinery. But it was only during the 1950s that this development really took off. In Norway and Sweden similar tendencies are visible in relation to the postponement of the rationalization process (Morell, 2001: 262–288; Almås, 2002: 128–134).

1950–2000 The post-war era, which properly got under way at the beginning of the 1950s, has been characterized by the continued focus on agricultural production and the impact of this on the national economy, albeit that the attitude towards agriculture changed in all three countries from the 1980s on. Whereas the focus had previously been only on agricultural production –the ability of agriculture to produce food, create jobs and generate revenues for the Treasury – it changed thereafter, as it did in the other countries around the North Sea, and environmental matters, consumer concerns, animal welfare, and neighbourhood interests came to the fore. Danish and, to a smaller extent, Swedish and Norwegian farming from 1950 onwards was characterized by five major features, namely extensive mechanization, strong rationalization, far-reaching specialization, significant structural development and, regarding the 1950s and 1960s, very difficult export conditions, all of which influenced each other. 393

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Table 12.3 Full-time employees in Danish agriculture, 1950–2007 1950 400 000

1960

1970

1980

1995

2007

315 000

200 000

130 000

80 000

59 000

Sources: Bjørn, 1988b: 275–296; Porsmose and Bjørn, 1997: 103–108; Landbrug and Fødevarer, 2008: 9.

The first, extensive mechanization – which also had a visual impact – concerned the spread of tractors in agriculture, a development that included the spread of combine harvesters, new and improved ploughs, harrows, seeding machines, sprayers, etc. This brought about a very significant reduction in the number of people working on the land. Furthermore, new field sprays meant that weeds such as quick grass, thistles, ground elder, etc. could be virtually eliminated by spraying, which both saved labour and contributed towards increasing yields ( Jeppesen and Nissen, 2000: 104–110). Stables, too, were mechanized and automated during this period. In the first years after the war, milking machines were acquired on virtually all farms, and since then diary technology has developed very dramatically. The milking process on modern dairy farms is automated, and in most contemporary cowsheds the cows themselves are walking in to milking automatons to be milked. A similar development has happened in relation to mucking out the stables and feeding the animals. In the 1950s and 1960s, these tasks were done manually; nowadays, the processes are more or less automated, manual labour having been dispensed with. Thus, mechanization and automation meant that, by the turn of the millennium, farmers’ work was very different to what it had been a few decades earlier. Nowadays, there is no longer much hard manual work and the main tasks have become the monitoring of automatic systems and the planning, organization and management of production. An important consequence of mechanization and automation has obviously been very strong rationalization, the second feature of post-war farming in Scandinavia. Indeed, the number of people working full-time in Danish agriculture – i.e. both farmers themselves and wage labour –Danish farming has dropped emphatically in the decades since the end of the Second World War: over the last 60 years, the number of full-time employees has declined to about one seventh of the 1950 level (Table 12. 3). The rationalization of Danish agriculture has expressed itself in terms not only of mechanization and employment, but also and above all of productivity. In field production, harvesting yields increased significantly, as illustrated by the fact that, over the 1960–1995 period, the total area of Danish arable land decreased by 13 per cent, whereas the total yield measured in crop units rose by 17 per cent (Porsmose and Bjørn, 1997: 107). This development is linked to several factors: the steady development of better seeds and plants, the increasing use of fertilizers (the consumption of nitrogen fertilizer, for instance, increased from about 40 kg per hectare in 1960 to 117 394



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Table 12.4 Full-time farmers in Danish agriculture, 1950–2007 1950 200 000

1960

1970

1980

1995

2007

200 000

150 000

114 000

66 000

15 000

Sources: Porsmose and Bjørn, 1997: 107; Landøkonomisk oversigt, 2008: 8.

kg per hectare in 1995), new pesticides, more efficient farming machinery and better ­irrigation systems, especially for sandy soils. In animal production, the average milk yield per cow increased from less than 6 000 kg fat per year in 1983 to nearly 10 000 kg in 2007, whereas the average number of piglets per sow rose from about 18 to more than 26 per year over the same period (Landøkonomisk oversigt, 2008: 40). Again, one can point to several factors that contributed to the increase in productivity: continuous progress in livestock breeding with Danish and foreign breeding material, which resulted in increasingly more productive dairy cows and rapidly growing pigs; the search for optimal feed and rations; the automation of cattle farms, including constant monitoring of the animals to detect diseases and prevent their spreading; progress in veterinary medicine; and the increasing use of sterile pigsties, which helps to prevent contamination. It is estimated that, since 1966, agricultural productivity in Denmark has increased by 6.7 per cent annually, which means that, in 2007, each farmer produced about fourteen times more food than his predecessor 40 years ago. This increase in productivity is significantly higher than in any other industry in Denmark over the same period (Landøkonomisk oversigt, 2008: 87–88). The driving force behind this is that agriculture has been under constant financial pressure since the 1950s. Post-war food prices increased much less than other prices and wages. Especially in the 1960s, the 1990s and the in first decade of the third millennium, agriculture has had to compete with other economic sectors offering better wages and labour conditions, to retain the necessary work force. Farmers have been constantly forced to invest in cost-effective methods to avoid being outmatched. Cost-effectiveness is essential to survival as an independent farmer and has served to reinforce our third feature, the far-reaching specialization since the war. There are virtually no full-time farms left with a production pattern mixing arable farming, pasture, cattle breeding (dairy cows, pigs) and a little market gardening; the choice has come down to just one option. A specific consequence of the specialization process is geographical division: livestock production has shifted in recent decades to the west in Jutland. arable farming, producing cash crops, is concentrated in the islands. The majority of Danish dairy farms are now to be found in Jutland, as are most pig-raising farms (Landøkonomisk oversigt, 2008: 14–19). The fourth feature – significant structural development – is a concomitant of the previous three. Not only did the number of full-time employees in agriculture drop, so did the number of full-time farmers. 395

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As the number of full-time farmers declined, the remaining farms became bigger. In 1960, Danish farms averaged 15.8 hectares in size; in 1995, up to 40.7 hectares; by 2007, very few full-time farmers had less than 50 hectares of land and 4 155 had more than 100 hectares (Landøkonomisk oversigt, 2008, 8). In 1983, there were on average 28 dairy cows per dairy farmer; in 1999, 58; by 2007, 101. Over a period of 25 years, the average number of dairy cows per farm increased fourfold, whereas the number of milk producers decreased from nearly 40 000 to about 4 500 ( Jeppesen and Nissen, 2000: 53–55; Landøkonomisk oversigt, 2008: 14–19). A similar process can be observed in pig farming: the average number of pig farmers falling from approximately 55 000 in 1982 to 7 200 in 2007, whereas Danish pig production expanded by more than 50 per cent, meaning that the average number of pigs per farm increased tenfold (Landøkonomisk oversigt, 2008: 14–19). There is no evidence that these structural changes are about to stop. Alongside these developments in primary agriculture, there have been equally dramatic developments in the agricultural processing industry. Over the last six decades, very strong concentration has taken place, both in relation to the number of dairies and slaughterhouses, and in relation to individual firms’ market shares. Declining real prices for butter and pork since the early 1960s put pressure on the famous Danish co-operative dairies and slaughterhouses that were spread across the country. With the Danish road system expanding rapidly after the war and refrigerated tankers making it possible to carry milk over longer distances, many local dairy co-operatives closed down or merged with other dairies. In 1960, Denmark still had more than 1 100 cooperative dairies; by 1970, the number had dropped to 410; by 1980 to 147; and by 2000, to just only fourteen (www.mejeri.dk). In line with this development, the number of suppliers of dairy products on the Danish market shrank, too. In 1970, on the basis of a merger of several Jutlandic dairies, Mejeriselskabet Danmark (MD) was established. Its strategy consisted of producing and selling all types of dairy product, and taking over (co-operative) dairies specialized in the production of milk, (co-operative) butter factories and cheese factories. From the late 1980s and into the 1990s, just two major milk suppliers were left in Denmark, namely MD and Kløvermælk. Both were cooperative enterprises, and shareholding dairy farmers expressed growing dissatisfaction with the competition between them. That was a key reason why, in 1999, the two companies were merged; followed this came a merger with the Swedish co-operative dairy Arla to form Arla Foods. Since then, Arla Foods has steadily outmatched its rivals to become today virtually the only supplier of dairy products on the Danish market, at the same time boasting a market share of 65 per cent in Sweden (Fink, 2008: 6–13). A similar picture can be painted for the abattoir sector, where most slaughterhouses – both private and co-operative – have shut down since the early 1960s. In recent years, there has also been a trend of sending Danish pigs to foreign slaughterhouses, mainly in northern Germany. The reasons are twofold: first, the improvement in transport technology, better trucks and roads making it possible to transport pigs over long distances; secondly, the shift, via successive mergers, from traditional labour-intensive slaughtering in small slaughterhouses, conducted by qualified butchers with relatively high wages, to very large and efficient slaughterhouse companies. Today, there is only 396



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one big supplier of pork and beef left in Denmark, the co-operative company Danish Crown, which, in pig slaughtering, has a market share of more than 90 per cent. One can easily argue that the processes of mechanization, rationalization, specialization and structural development in Danish agriculture have accelerated since 1973, when Denmark became a member of the European Economic Community (EEC), and that the difficult export conditions – the fifth feature of post-war farming – have been largely resolved by that membership. Danish farmers benefitted instantly from the EEC´s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which included relatively high fixed prices for a range of products. One consequence of this was that structural development – i.e. the transition to fewer and bigger farms – was postponed; from the beginning of the 1980s, however, the EEC started to lower relative food prices and introduce production quotas, etc. to speed up restructuring. From the outset of Denmark’s EEC membership, the agricultural organizations, represented by the Agricultural Council, expressed a qualified opinion concerning the CAP. Officially, they were against fixed prices, various subsidies, the protection of EEC farmers, etc. and spoke in favour of a free market for agricultural products within the EEC and even worldwide. At the same time, there was a ‘but’ in their discourse, their argument being that, if other farmers received subsidies, Danish farmers had a right to the same; they knew full well that farmers in countries such as France, Germany and Spain would never accept total repeal of the protectionist CAP. Their ‘open-market’ argument was thus relatively risk-free. In 1972 and again in 1994, Norway voted against EEC/EU membership. Today, the country is closely affiliated with the EU, and Norwegian agriculture to a large extent falls in line with EU legislation. Sweden became a member of the EU in 1995, since when farming in the southern part of the country has experienced a development much like that in Denmark since the 1970s, i.e. rationalization and substantial reduction in the number of farms.

Impact on consumers During the twentieth century in Scandinavia, changes in farming and food processing went hand in hand with changing eating patterns. As demonstrated by Morell, the diet of the Swedish population shifted between the late nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth from mainly bread and potatoes to more pork, beef, dairy products and sugar. A similar trend can be observed in Denmark and Norway. The explanation is threefold: first, along with the shift to more cattle breeding, the quality of meat increased and its relative price went down; secondly, population growth, urbanization and industrialization led to an increasing demand for processed food; thirdly, there was a rise in the income and spending power of a growing part of the population, and an ever smaller share of that income was being spent on food, albeit that, in absolute terms, more money than before was being spent on higher quality food (Morell, 1997: 224–228). Rural households, which continued until the middle of the twentieth century to rely in part on domestic food production, also became integrated into the changing consumption patterns. Nowadays, almost all food is purchased, and various pre-cooked dishes represent a growing part of Scandinavian families’ meals. 397

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This phenomenon is related not only to increased purchasing power, but also to the high employment rates among Scandinavian women, almost 80 per cent, who spend less time on cooking than a few decades ago. Increasing incomes and changing work patterns have also changed dining cultures in the three countries. Previously, it was normal in both rural and urban families to eat a two-course hot meal for lunch at 12 o’clock, and for the evening dinner to consist of bread and leftovers from the midday meal. Today, hot meals are eaten in the evening, with lunch being taken outside the home – for instance, at work or at school (Bjørn, 1999; Kayser Nielsen, 2003). Retailing, thus, has become crucial for Scandinavian families’ food purchases. Therefore, it can be regarded as a problem that just a very few retail chains in all northwest-European countries are sitting on crucial market shares. In Denmark, the two largest chains – the co-operative Coop Danmark and Dansk Supermarket – have together a market share of around 65 per cent. Taking into consideration that just a few major producers of food – Danish Crown and Arla, for example – account for large parts of the food production infrastructure, a very small number of people in the food industries and retailing companies decide what consumers can buy and eat. Since the beginning of the 1980s, agriculture in Scandinavia has become the object of criticism. Environmental, animal welfare, food safety and other issues are increasingly focused upon, which might be why food producers such as Arla Foods and Danish Crown try ‘to make the big companies small’ and their products ‘closer to nature’ (Nissen, 2009), at least in consumers’ eyes. Agriculture and the food industry talk about modern agriculture and food production as if they still represent traditional values and practices, attempting in this way to bridge the gap between them and critical and demanding consumers.

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Bibliography Ahlberger, C. (1997) ‘Det moderna konsumtionssamhället’, in L. Magnusson and J. Söderberg (eds), Kultur och konsumtion i Norden 1750–1950, Historiallinen arkisto 110, 2, Helsingfors, pp. 113–134. Almås, R. (2002) Norges landbrujkshistorie, IV, 1920–2000: Fra bondesamfunn til bioindustri, Oslo. Avdem, A. J. (1984) ‘... gjort kva gjerast skulle’. Om arbeid och levekår for kvinner på Lesja ca. 1910–1930, Oslo. Ax, C. F. (2008) ‘Bondens knold – om udbredelsen af kartofler til den jævne befolkning 1750–1840’, Landbohistorisk Tidsskrift, 2, pp. 45–70. Bjørn, C. (1988) ‘1810–1860’, in C. Bjørn et al. (eds), Det danske landbrugs historie, III, 1810–1914, Copenhagen, pp. 9–192. Bjørn, C. et al. (eds) (1988a) Det danske landbrugs historie, III, 1810–1914, Odense. Bjørn, C. et al. (eds) (1988b) Det danske landbrugs historie, IV, 1914–1988, Odense. Bjørn, C. (1999) Det danske landkøkken, Copenhagen. Boje, P. (1977) Danske provinskøbmænds vareomsætning og kapitalforhold 1815–1847, Aarhus. Christensen, S. B. (2001) Monopol, marked og magasiner. Dansk kornhandel og kornpolitik 1730–1850 – med hovedvægt på reformårene, Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Aarhus. Christensen, S. B. (2006) ‘Købstadsystemet og oplandets bygder ca. 1450–1800’, in P. G. Møller et al. (eds), Bygder – regionale variationer i det danske landbrug, Odense, pp. 77–103. Christensen, S. B. (2008) ‘The market towns as economic agents’, in S. B. Christensen and J. Mikkelsen (eds), Danish Towns during Absolutism. Urbanisation and urban life 1660–1848, Aarhus, pp. 45–96. Degn, O. (2001) ‘Fairs as periodical regional centres in Denmark, 1600–1900’, in F.-E. Eliassen, J. Mikkelsen and B. Poulsen (eds), Regional integration in Early-Modern Scandinavia, Odense, pp. 140–161. Dybdahl, V. (1946–47) ‘Hans Broge og det jyske landbrug’, in Historie. Jyske Samlinger, pp. 57–134. Dyrvik, S. et al (1979) Norsk økonomisk historie 1500–1970, vol. 1, Bergen. Fink, J. (2008) ’Mælk, monopol og myte. Mælkehistorie og mælkehistorier’, Kontur, 17, pp. 4–13. Flygare, I. A. and Isacson, M. (2003) Jordbruket i välfärdssamhället, 1945–2000, Det svenska jordbrukets historia, vol. 5, Borås. Gadd, C. J. (1997) ‘Jordbrukets binäringar’, in B. Larsson, M. Morell and J. Myrdal (eds), Agrarhistoria, Stockholm, pp. 229–238. Gadd, C.-J. (2000) Den agrara revolutionen : 1700–1870. Det svenska jordbrukets historia, vol. 3, Stockholm. Gjerdåker, B. (2002) Norges landbrukshistorie, III, 1814–1920: kontinuitet of modernitet, Oslo. Glamann, K. and Friis, A. (1958) A history of prices and wages in Denmark 1660–1800, Copenhagen. Hansen, H. S. (1994) Det sønderjyske landbrugs historie 1830–1993, Aabenraa.

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Herstad, J. (2000) I helstatens grep. Kornmonopolet 1735–88, Oslo. Hyldtoft, O. (1999) Danmarks økonomiske historie 1840–1910, Herning. Jensen, S. P. (1991) ‘Mennesket, naturen og “landbrugsreformerne”’, Bol og By. Landbohistorisk Tidsskrift, 2, pp. 7–54. Jensen, S. P. (ed) (2007a) Fra stilstand til vækst. Studier i dansk landbrugs udvikling fra 1682 til 1914, Odense. Jensen, S. P. (2007b) ‘Agroøkologi og landbrugsudvikling i det 18. og 19. århundrede’, in S. P. Jensen (ed.), Fra stilstand til vækst. Studier i dansk landbrugs udvikling fra 1682 til 1914, Viborg, pp. 35–76. Jeppesen, L. and Nissen, M.R. (2000) Hollandske landmænd i Danmark. – Bekymring eller beundring?, Odense. Johansen, H. C. (1988) ‘Folk og produktion på fynske gårde gennem to århundreder’, Historie, pp. 351–386. Johansen, H. C. (1998) ‘Food consumption in the pre-industrial Nordic societies’, Scandinavian Economic History Review, vol. 46, 1, pp. 11–23. Just, F. (1992) Landbruget, staten og eksporten 1930–1950, Esbjerg. Kayser Nielsen, N. (2003) Madkultur. Opbrud og tradition, Copenhagen. Kjærgaard, T. (1996) Den danske revolution 1500–1800. En økohistorisk tolkning, Copenhagen. Landbrug and Fødevarer (2008) Landøkonomisk oversigt, Copenhagen. Lundqvist, P. (2008) Marknad på väg. Den västgötska gårdfarihandeln 1790–1864, Gøteborg. Lunden, K. (2002) Norges landbrukshistorie, vol. 2, Oslo. Maddison, A. (1991) Dynamic forces in capitalist development: a long-run comparative view, Oxford. Mejeriforeningen, www.mejeri.dk. Morell, M. (1989) Studier i den svenska livsmedelskonsumtionens historia. Hospitalhjonens livsmedelskonsumtion 1621–1872, Uppsala. Morell, M. (1997) ’Kosthållets utveckling’, in B.M.P. Larsson, M. Morell and J. Myrdal (eds), Agrarhistoria, Stockholm, pp. 211–228. Morell, M. (2001) Jordbruget i Industrisamhället 1870–1945, Det svenska jordbrukets historia, vol. 4, Borås. Nedkvitne, A. (1988) Mens Bønderne seilte og Jægterne for. Nordnorsk og vestnorsk kystøkonomi 1500–1730, Oslo. Nissen, M.R. (2004) Produktions- und Lieferfreudigkeit. – Landbruget under den tyske besættelse 1940–1945, Esbjerg. Nissen, M. R. (2005) Til fælles bedste – det danske landbrug under besættelsen, Copenhagen. Nissen, M. R (2009) ‘Landbrugets politiske magt – myte eller realitet?’, in Økonomi & Politik, 82. Årgang nr. 3, pp. 39–50. Pedersen, E. H. (1979) Landbrugsraadet som erhvervspolitisk toporgan 1919–33. Studier i de danske landbrugsorganisationers historie, Landbohistoriske Skrifter, 6, Copenhagen. Porsmose, E. and Bjørn, C (1997) Landbrugets historie kort fortalt, Copenhagen. Rogstad, B. (ed) (2003) Norwegian agriculture. Status and trends 2003, Oslo.

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Søbye, E. (1996) ‘Kaffe, sukker og lysolier’, Samfunnspeilet , vol. 10, pp. 40–51. Sogner, S. (1985) ‘Gifte kvinner i bondesamfunnet i et demografisk perspektiv’, in A. Tranberg and H. Winge (eds.) Kvinnekår i det gamle samfunn ca. 1500–1800, Oslo, pp. 89–116. Thestrup, P. (1971) The standard of living in Copenhagen 1730–1800. Some methods of measurement, Copenhagen. Tranberg, A. (1993) ‘Silke, kaffe og tekopper’, Ringsakerboka, vol. 3, pp. 316–325. Tranberg, A. and Winge, H. (eds) (1985) Kvindekår i det gamle samfunn ca. 1500–1850, Oslo. Tveite, S. (1988) ‘Kvinner i norsk bondesamfunn og bondenæring’, Jord og g jerning. Årbok for norsk landbruksmuseum, Oslo, pp. 61–88. Valen-Sendstad, F. (1964) Norske landbruksredskaper 1800–1850 årene, Lillehammer.

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13 Conclusion: the dynamics of the agro-food chain in

the North Sea Area, 500–2000 Yves Segers and Leen Van Molle

The North Sea area is a patchwork of agricultural regions, each with its own individual characteristics, but all nevertheless having much in common. Indeed, they share a great many historical developments – institutional, social, economic and cultural – albeit that these have not always been synchronous. They also share a similar physical geography in their lowlands and the sprinkling of low mountain regions. They area has a moderate maritime climate (mild and wet winters, warm and dry summers), which makes it especially suitable for agriculture and horticulture. For centuries, agriculture consisted of a combination of arable farming (chiefly grains), stock farming and horticulture (fruit and vegetables). Until some way into the nineteenth century, cattle were very much in the service of arable farming, providing tractive power and, above all, manure. During the twentieth century, this type of mixed farming gave way to far-reaching specialization and integration within the worldwide network of agro-business and the international agro-food market. From the Early Middle Ages on, the North Sea area began to develop into a highly urbanized and heavily populated region. In comparison to the situation in other areas of Europe and beyond, the economy very early took on a pronouncedly commercial character, which applied to foodstuffs, as well. For a number of products, such as grain, wine and salt, market orientation transcended regional character. The dismantling of the manorial system, the increasing number of free farmers and the growing market demand for food (in consequence of the expansion of the urban population and of artisanal and proto-industrial activities) served as a further boost to the broadening of the agro-food market during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. These developments in turn stimulated better performance in the agricultural sector, characterized by the beginning of (regional) specialization, which was also able to depend on demand from secular and religious elites for refined and luxury foodstuffs. In many respects, the ‘long nineteenth century’ was a pivotal period in the commercialization of the food chain. The accelerated growth of the west-European population from about 1750 on and further urbanization galvanized the search for still greater agrarian output and productivity. The increasing numbers of townspeople – artisans, traders, labourers and servants – all of whom were to a large extent obliged to purchase their food via the commercial circuit, had indeed to be fed. It was chiefly through the spread of new crops (the potato and maize, for example), better cultivation techniques (including chemical fertilizers), a more efficient transport network permitting imports from overseas, and varying market regulation that Europe succeeded in meeting the exploding demand for food. The other links in the food chain, such as processing and distribution (wholesale and retail sale) evolved in line with this. After the great ­hunger of the 1840s, the famines that periodically hit Europe became a thing of the past. 403

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In the interim since the Second World War, the North Sea area, under the direction of European economic policy, has evolved into one of the most prosperous regions in the world. However, the developments sketched out above did not manifest themselves ­everywhere simultaneously and in equal measure. Even within the area, there were – and are – significant differences. For instance, the agro-food market assumed a commercial character more rapidly in the triangular core formed by the Low Countries, ­north-west France and south-east England. In more peripheral areas, innovations generally took hold later. Moreover, market developments did not always follow a linear course, as exemplified by the range of food, which was more varied and richer (with greater recourse to animal products) during the Middle Ages than during the early stage of industrialization in the nineteenth century. Further, not all changes that appeared initially to be progressive proved to be positive. An example of this is provided by the ‘green revolution’ that got under way after the Second World War: it resulted in a quantitative and qualitative improvement in the range of food and in cheap food prices, but appears to have had a substantial, negative impact on the landscape, the environment and animal welfare. Economies of scale in and industrialization of ­farming and food processing have raised steadily more questions since then. This concluding chapter looks to chart the converging and diverging developments in the agro-food chain between regions and countries in the North Sea area during the years from 500 to 2000. We attempt to throw light on all links in the food chain and their complex inter-relationships. Our aim here, as is the case with the three other volumes in this series, is to offer a general interpretative framework that opens the way to an understanding of long-term developments regarding food production, processing, distribution and consumption in the area, and thereby make clear why markets were and still are a crucial driver of agricultural, rural and social change.

13.1 Modes of circulation and exchange of food and drink Central to this book – as indeed its title suggests – is the ‘agro-food market’ and the analytical and at the same time explanatory concept of the ‘agro-food chain’. By ‘agro-food market’, we mean all forms of the circulation and exchange of foodstuffs and drinks, and not necessarily by definition circulation and exchange via the formal, Smithian market economy. The non-market exchange of food is an ages-old practice and is still of great (social) importance, simple examples being neighbours exchanging surplus produce from their vegetable gardens or invitations to family or friends for a festive meal. Broadly speaking, four modes of the circulation of foodstuffs and drinks can be determined: the consumption of one’s own produce, gifts, (monetized) market exchange and clandestine activities such as poaching, smuggling and theft. Each of these four modes is addressed in this first section. For countless centuries, self-sufficiency predominated in social life in the North Sea area (see 13.2). Noble families, bishoprics, monasteries and abbeys possessed extensive agricultural lands, and themselves, with the help of serfs or farm workers, cultivated 404



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the food that was necessary or received it by way of, for example, rents in kind or tithes from their tenants. The free peasantry, a multitude of small and medium-sized ­farmers, produced first and foremost to satisfy its own requirements. The importance of the exchange of food and drink via trade and ‘the market’ (in the Smithian sense) was very limited in many regions during the Early and Later Middle Ages. It is nevertheless impossible to give a figure for the share of commercially traded products vis-à-vis total food production during the pre-industrial period. It is likewise impossible to quantify a second mode of exchange, the interplay of gifts and reciprocal gifts of food and drink, although it is clear that the importance of that interplay may not be underestimated (see also chapters 2 and 5). The gift culture was for long widespread in west-European society; everyone participated in it, rural folk and townspeople, farmers and lords, religious institutions and noble households. The giving of gifts, including food, was customary on various occasions, such as a birth or marriage, a religious feast, the conclusion of a contract, the gathering of the harvest and the visit of an important person. Charlemagne, for instance, peregrinated c­ onstantly with his retinue around his empire, and royal villae in his network of estates, as well as monasteries and vassals, were duty-bound to provide him with hospitality, food and gifts. The gift’s significance goes beyond its economic function as a way of facilitating the circulation of goods. Its social, cultural and political dimensions may not be underplayed. This ‘gift economy’ was long in operation side by side with the ‘market economy’; it is still to a limited extent in existence today. It had its own rules, formalities and practices. For example, the acceptance of a gift was an indication that a ­countergift would follow, with, as Quellier writes, the reciprocity being the completion of the practice’s social acceptance (see 5.2). The gifts that were exchanged (sometimes expressly in public) made social positions clear, symbolized the acceptance of power, and so forth. The choice of gift, too, was important. It could transmit a message, such as the underlining of local identity, which was the intention in medieval France with the gifts by town authorities of locally produced food to a prince on the occasion of his Joyous Entry. Also a part of the gift economy was charity. Since the Early Middle Ages, it had been the Christian duty of the nobility and other people of substance to distribute food (bread, for instance) among the poor in their neighbourhood. Some Carolingian abbeys are known to have supported a few dozen needy families, which were called ‘prebendaries’. In the nineteenth century, St. Vincent de Paul societies in France and Belgium supported poor workers’ families with bread and potatoes, as well as clothing and coal. Even in the present day, there are non-profit organizations (including food banks) that devote themselves to distributing food among the poor of north-western Europe. At the same time, the role and impact of ‘the market’ became ever greater for ­agriculture and the provision of food, certainly at the core of the North Sea area, partly because landlords and authorities obliged farmers – through, for instance, the imposition of taxes and rents in cash – to market a greater proportion of their produce (see 13.3 ff.). It was in this way that, in 1439 in the Kingdom of France, payment of the taille became a recurrent obligation, being the principal direct tax levied by the 405

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monarchy on commoners, and in money, not in kind. Furthermore, the monetized agro-food market did not operate autonomously, but in interaction with other modes of exchange. Right into the nineteenth century, many servants and agricultural ­workers, for example, were receiving remuneration in kind (including food) or enjoying board and lodging on the farms where they worked. In other words, the labour and food markets were closely linked to each other. Not to be left out of account, either, is the fourth mode of food exchange, namely the clandestine activities of theft, poaching, smuggling, food riots in periods of shortage and high prices, and pillage during wars. Food was always stolen in times of hunger, both in towns and in the countryside, and was more or less accepted as a survival strategy that meshed with the “moral economy of the crowd”, as E.P. Thompson showed, and that appealed to feelings of Christian compassion to escape punishment. During both world wars, indeed, urban gangs headed for the countryside to steal food from the fields, or people snaffled food at markets. A notable constant in all this was the role played by women and children: women, because of their culturally determined role in respect of the preparation of food; and ‘innocent’ children, because they attracted milder punishment.

13.2  Self-sufficiency as the ideal For a long-time, self-sufficiency was both an economic reality and an ideal for ­landlords, States and towns, religious institutions, farmers and other private households, and for good reason in each case. Until far into the nineteenth century (and in more peripheral areas until a good way into the twentieth), the majority off larger farmers and small peasants produced substantially for their own consumption. The result was a short, simple and thus inexpensive food chain: direct from the field to the fork. For many monasteries and abbeys, isolation from the world, which implied self-sufficiency, was an important ideal of their religious life. For the feudal nobility and civil elites, selfsufficiency was the expression of good management: they took on the exploitation of their extensive agricultural lands themselves, and thereby determined the volume, quality, taste and variety of their daily food. This gave them food security and enhanced their social prestige. A striking example of this is formed by the instructions in the Capitulare de villis vel curtis imperii dating from 780-800, which laid down what ­vegetables and fruit were to be cultivated at the royal villae. The agricultural p­ roduction of the demesne (particularly cereals) was thus to a great extent structured by aristocrats’ demand. Subsisting through consuming one’s own produce was therefore by no means a sign of poverty or of a less-developed economy. Subsequently, the pursuit of self-sufficiency became a strategy for towns and m ­ odern nation states – as exemplified by France and Germany during the late nineteenth century – to guarantee food security without dependence on the import of basic foodstuffs (bread grain) from other countries. In this way, they could, in times of war or international political tension, continue to function autonomously as regards food provision. Greater self-sufficiency also reduced the effect of fluctuating market supplies and sometimes sharply volatile prices. 406



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For private households, too, lastly, whether in town or countryside, a degree of selfsufficiency was for long desirable and even necessary. The vegetable garden was not only symbolic of this, but also its keystone. A great deal of attention, care and energy went into the cultivation of one’s own vegetables, fruit, herbs and sometimes even vines and bread grain. Small stock such as rabbits, chickens and goats were a source of meat, eggs and milk, not forgetting manure. The produce of the vegetable garden or patch was sometimes supplemented by the gathering of wild berries and nuts, the trapping (or poaching) of small game and river fish. Any occasional surplus could be put to use in the gift culture or as seigneurial dues in kind, or be sold on the local market. The vegetable garden is generally associated with the countryside, but it ought not to be forgotten that, until far into the nineteenth century and even into the twentieth, food was cultivated within town limits, not only by professional farmers and horticulturalists, but also by private people for their own consumption. Moreover, many townspeople had rural roots and links with agriculture, which gave them the knowledge of how to maintain a vegetable garden, to raise some poultry or a few ­rabbits in a pen or hutch in the yard, or to fatten a pig. In this respect, the boundaries between town and countryside were less tight than academic literature often suggests. What became a familiar sight in and on the periphery of towns from the end of the nineteenth century on were the allotments, where working people cultivated potatoes, vegetables and sometimes fruit, besides occasionally keeping small stock. During the two world wars, when food was scarce and expensive, and the normal market circuits were not functioning properly, (urban) self-sufficiency shot up again in popularity. There has never been an absence of self-sufficiency. In recent decades, indeed, there has been noticeable, renewed interest in the production and processing of one’s own food, even within a metropolitan context. It is a trend that feeds off various desires. Utilitarian motives undoubtedly play an important part, certainly in difficult economic times. Governments and social organizations promote the cultivation of one’s own vegetables (in allotment gardens, for example) as a means of empowering the poor and a way of reinforcing the social fabric in out-of-the-way neighbourhoods. For migrants from North Africa, for example (who very often have a rural background), it is an opportunity to cultivate their own vegetables and herbs. However, consumers also opt for self-sufficiency as a reaction to industrially produced foodstuffs of uncertain origin and uniform taste; they want once again to know where their food comes from. It is a response both to ecologically unjustifiable methods of production and to the sharply increased gap between producer and consumer.

13.3  The early development of markets Let us return to the historic development of the agro-food market in the North Sea area. The accepted picture of the agricultural economy in the Early Middle Ages and even through to the Early Modern Period is one of limited market dynamism. Selfsufficiency predominated. The lords of the land ruled the peasants and appropriated a great part of their surplus produce. In exchange for their tenure, dependent peasants were obliged to fulfil duties of all kinds for their masters. They supplied agricultural and 407

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livestock products and made honour gifts to their masters (chickens, eggs, bread, ale); they participated in the demesne’s farming and were required to undertake labour on boon-work plots on the landed estates. Free peasants had to pay dues and tributes, or tithes when the dues were to religious institutions. This system can be best described as a transfer economy. Peasants, and thus the countryside, were under obligation to supply labour, goods and services to the noble and ecclesiastical elites. Until the 1960s, many historians described the manorial economy of the Early Middle Ages as a closed economy, a geschlossene Hauswirtschaft, characterized by few commercial transactions and market ties. For this, they had recourse to three arguments. The first concerned the limited degree of agricultural efficiency: yields would have been too restricted for a market surplus to be generated. The second was that the transport infrastructure was too poor and transport costs too high. Lastly, there would have been a lack of the necessary demand stimuli: both the secular and religious elites in fact produced their own food on their domains, or collected it by means of rents in kind, systems of sharecropping, etc.; less wealthy families, for their part, had insufficient financial means to buy food or other products and had necessarily to rely on being self-sufficient. However, recent research has shown convincingly that the role of informal and ­formal market circuits from the Early Middle Ages on must not be underestimated. The first argument in particular appears not altogether to hold good. In a number of regions of the North Sea area, agriculture did indeed achieve high yields. Numerous landed estates boasted harvests in normal years that were not only enough for the ­requirements of self-sufficiency (including the supply of dues in produce to their ­secular and ­ecclesiastical superiors, and the supply of their labourers), but also ­produced surpluses that could be marketed. Big landowners were sufficiently dynamic to sell surpluses directly or via intermediaries, as exemplified by the impressive quantities of grain and wine that the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés was already selling in the ninth century. Not only did the merchandise go to nearby regions in northern France, but the exchange circuit extended via the port of Quentovic to the British Isles and to ports in the north, such as Dorestad and Ribe. In late medieval Denmark and Sweden, for instance, some of the most important sellers of grain and cattle to Hanseatic and Dutch merchants were big secular or ecclesiastical landowners, disposing of their rents. In other words, there was – already at an early date – active long-distance trade, albeit for a select group of products not prone to perish quickly, and limited in volume. Trading activities of this kind and the requirement for cash fees brought about an increase in the circulation of money within and around the large ecclesiastical and royal estates, enabling the elite also to acquire goods that could not be produced on their own estates, such as salt and certain spices. The ideal of self-sufficiency in isolation ought therefore not to be taken too literally. Rather, the seigneurial economy must be viewed as a motor for market development. Demand from the aristocracy and the clergy was the driving force behind the development of early market structures. Free peasants and tenants, too, took advantage of market opportunities. In regions where seigneurial power was less oppressive – in the northern and western part of Europe, including England, Brittany and Germany east of the Rhine – the peasantry 408



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enjoyed a greater degree of autonomy and was able to be more entrepreneurial. Put ­otherwise, property rights and access to land mattered when it came to market-­ orientation. By the end of the Middle Ages, though, most among the rural population around the North Sea had managed to free themselves from the manorial economy and especially from the labour services imposed on them by the lords. Free, independent farmers determined to a great extent autonomously what they produced and were also less restricted in responding to market demand. Whether they actually did depended on various factors. Was their farm of sufficient size and their land sufficiently fertile to generate a market surplus? To what extent did they have access to the market and did they have information about prices and consumer preferences? Were they adequately dynamic to respond to market demand? In the Low Countries, with their dense ­network of towns, it was relatively simple to sell surpluses oneself on the market or to itinerant traders. Even small producers could market their surpluses: a little butter, cheese or fruit, or a few eggs or vegetables, for instance. But there had, of course, to be demand, whether in the vicinity or on markets further afield. During the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, demand could come from towns and regions with proto-industrial activities, as in the Southern Netherlands and the Scandinavian woodlands, or the region around Osnabrück (Germany). Elsewhere, where demand was less, the transport infrastructure below par and farmers failed to generate surpluses, the commercial character of the agro-food economy remained minimal.

13.4  Population, urbanization and industrialization A strong boost to the development of the modern agro-food chain came from ­increasing market demand for foodstuffs from people and households unconnected with ­agriculture. The explanation for this is to be sought in complex and radical, ­underlying processes, namely demographic growth, urbanization, proto-industrialization and industrialization, and the improvement in the purchasing power of broad swathes of the population, certainly from the second half of the nineteenth century on. Between about the year 500 and the beginning of the twenty-first century, the population of north-western Europe (France, the Low Countries, the British Isles, Germany and Scandinavia) rose, on a rough estimation, from about 9 million to 22.5 million around 1450 and to 256 million in 2000. During the Early Middle Ages, ­virtually everyone lived within or close to a country environment or, more particularly, on the land; today, less than 20 per cent of the population of the North Sea area live in municipalities with fewer than 2 000 inhabitants. In a parallel development, the structure of the labour force has undergone drastic change. For centuries long, the great majority had direct links with the production and processing of food. Recent times, however, have seen rapid change come to that situation. In industrial Belgium, for example, around 1850, approximately 50 per cent of the labour force were engaged in agriculture and horticulture; around 1900, 25 per cent; and in 2000, barely 2 per cent. Put otherwise, the last two centuries have been a period in which steadily fewer farmers (in relative and consequently in absolute terms, too) have had to try to meet the 409

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sharply increasing demand for food. The North Sea area is one of the few areas in the world that, since the nineteenth century, has succeeded – through higher production and efficient trading of foodstuffs – in defusing Malthusian tensions in structural terms. Strong population growth throughout the North Sea area marked the period between the eleventh and the early fourteenth century. In the British Isles, ­demographic growth had begun two or three centuries earlier. In France, the population expanded from about six million in 1100 to around 20 million in 1328, most strongly in the regions suitable for grain cultivation, such as the vicinity of Paris. There were, of course, notable regional differences. In the British Isles, the north and west were much less densely populated than the south and east. In England, a dozen counties besides London and Middlesex were much more crowded than other parts. The population increase during the High Middle Ages led in all regions of the North Sea area to an expansion of the arable, which was accomplished through internal colonization, the enclosure of common land, land reclamation and dyke construction. Rising demand sent the price of bread grain soaring and this served to stimulate investment in agricultural and technical innovation, which saw the spread of the harrow, the improvement of the plough and the replacement of oxen by draught horses. The result was a widespread process of cerealization and more intensive cultivation of the land. In the core region of the North Sea area, the greater part of the land was brought under cultivation, as in southern England, for example. The acreage of farmland in 1914, though, did not greatly exceed that in 1086. Meanwhile, urbanization began to wax. Steadily more people began to establish themselves in the vicinity of a number of abbeys, monasteries and royal palaces from the Carolingian period, and to develop artisanal activities there. Such ‘nuclei of ­urbanization’ were able to develop into towns, as exemplified by Arras, which was initially a small settlement of artisans and traders close to the Abbey of St. Vaast; fortified during the ninth century against Viking attacks, it developed further to become the urban centre of today. In many instances, towns grew up in locations that offered good, natural protection or that lent themselves easily to trading activities, such as a coastal strip, a navigable river or a trade route. Of crucial importance for the continued growth of a town was, of course, the possibility of growing sufficient food, or attracting it from elsewhere. Research by Richard Britnell on England ­during the 1050-1300 period (see 3.1) shows that not all towns had the same impact on the ­agro-food market. Older urban centres that had grown organically (Cambridge, Leicester and Nottingham, for example) generally had quite extensive fields at their disposal and retained farming interests into the eighteenth century. Newly established towns (Leeds and S­ tratford-upon-Avon, for instance, both created around 1200) did not always have sufficient fields and farming resources to offer reasonable degrees of autonomy. Furthermore, there were numerous towns around 1300 that were too small to offer many artisans a living, with the result that their populaces combined artisanal activities with agricultural. Demographic growth stagnated in the Late Middle Ages, a characteristic of what is called ‘the late medieval crisis’. In Denmark, England and France, for example, that stagnation was under way before the outbreak of the Black Death in 1348. In 410



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other countries, including Norway and Sweden, the stagnation began only with the ­visitation of the plagues of the mid-fourteenth century. There is, however, no conclusive ­explanation for these regional differences. It is difficult to overestimate the impact of the ­successive outbreaks of plague on the population of the North Sea area. The ­likelihood is that, overall, population numbers were cut by half, although the mortality rate was somewhat lower in certain regions, particularly the Low Countries. As regards agriculture, it appears that the late medieval crisis hit chiefly the grain regions, facing them with both a labour shortage and low grain prices. There was a ­positive side, though, in that the tension between population and food subsided for quite a while. The impact of the crisis was less in regions where animal husbandry prevailed, such as the Lower Rhine, Westphalia north of the River Lippe, the Emsland and strips along the North Sea coast. As a consequence of the demographic crisis, the agricultural sector was able to shift the focus in many areas from basic food (grain) to more stock breeding, dairying and horticulture. It is no accident that sources from the fifteenth century indicate an improvement in diet, with higher consumption of meat and dairy products in the North Sea area. The crisis also had significant consequences at the institutional level. The scarcity of labour forced lords and large landowners into giving their peasants greater freedom or, in other words, into whittling down their s­ eigneurial rights; as Kopsidis and Lorenzen-Schmidt write, “it appeared to be only economic pressure, i.e. the need to ensure a sufficient grain supply for the urban p­ opulation, that brought about an enhanced personal freedom for the peasantry” (see 9.1). From the mid-sixteenth century on, the population of the North Sea area began to expand once again, an expansion that continued into the eighteenth century, albeit with fluctuations and regional differences. For certain regions, this growth was ­accompanied by marked urbanization, whose corollary was an increase in grain ­cultivation accompanied by a reduction in animal husbandry. The unevenness of demographic growth had to do with not only sickness and war, but also the availability of sufficient food. Regions that, during late medieval and early modern times, could boast grain surpluses – Denmark and Skåne in southern Sweden are examples – had to cope less with hunger-related diseases and consequently had lower mortality rates. It was chiefly the core of the North Sea area that was marked by high population density and a high level or urbanization, and it was there that, during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, such large cities as Antwerp, Paris, Amsterdam and London developed. By the early 1500s, England’s capital had about 100 000 inhabitants, a figure that rose to around 400 000 by about 1650 and to around 675 000 by about 1750, representing 11 per cent of the country’s total population. By 1750, London was the biggest city in Europe, followed by Paris with something like 650 000 inhabitants, and Londoners enjoyed above-average prosperity. Urbanization and industrialization in England and to a less extent Scotland went hand in hand during the eighteenth century. In the England of 1600, 5.8 per cent of the population were living in towns of 10 000 or more inhabitants; by 1750, the proportion had risen to 17 per cent and by 1800 to 20.3 per cent. This last proportion, it is worth noting, brought England close to the high level of urbanization that had characterized the Low Countries – and certainly Flanders, Brabant and Holland – since the Middle Ages; by 1800, though, the 411

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degree of urbanization in the Low Countries had risen to 47.7 per cent. The i­ ncreasing urbanization, further, had a profound impact on the agrarian hinterland, on the system of food distribution and, by extension, on the entire agro-food chain (see 13.5). The periphery of the North Sea area was less densely populated and was home to fewer large urban centres. In Northwest Germany, the most important towns and  trading centres were found in the fertile Boerde areas of southern Lower Saxony and Westphalia, along the coast and navigable rivers, examples being Bremen, Hamburg and particularly Lübeck, which, during the first quarter of the sixteenth century, acted as a kind of metropolis for the whole region north and south of the Baltic. However, the only town to bear something of a comparison with towns in the Low Countries and northern Italy was Cologne, albeit that its extent and growth were limited: between 1150 and 1750, the number of its inhabitants rose from 20 000 to 44 500. The middle of the eighteenth century marked the beginning of a fresh spurt in demographic growth, first in England, then in what was to become Belgium, and thereafter in other regions of the North Sea area. That growth, which heralded the first phase of the demographic transition, rested on a persistently high birth rate and a falling mortality rate, which can be put down to something of an improvement in sanitation and medicine, though chiefly to more plentiful and better food and slowly improving living standards. In this process, agriculture played a dual role, being both trend-setter and trend-follower – a chicken-and-egg situation. It faced the challenge of producing sufficient food to obviate fresh Malthusian tensions. In England, Scotland and Belgium, all this was accompanied by increasing industrialization and urbanization, meaning that a steadily expanding proportion of the population was totally dependent on market supply for its food provisions. Rising market demand, as yet chiefly domestic, provided a powerful boost to the intensification and modernization of agriculture. In Great Britain, expansion of the acreage under agriculture was brought about by enclosure; in the Low Countries, through the development of heathland and waste ground, and through land ­reclamation. Under pressure from demographic growth, agriculture focused chiefly on the production of basic foodstuffs, i.e. bread grains and, increasingly, potatoes, with their high caloric content. Higher yields were achieved through better crop rotation and careful weeding (cf. chapter 8, ‘Dutch husbandry’), the use of more and better tools, and the application of scientific and technical know-how as regards, for example, livestock improvement and drainage. Farmers also began to have ever-greater recourse to external input, in order to improve soil fertility. In this respect, urbanization led to a busy trade in town waste, manure superseded from the mid-nineteenth century on by guano imported from South America. Although still only to a limited degree, farmers (particularly the bigger, more commercially oriented farmers) thus became more dependent on suppliers and, downstream, other links in the agro-food chain, a chain that gradually took on an international and indeed inter-continental character. Research has shown that the modernization of agriculture initially got under way in regions of the North Sea area where Malthusian tensions were greatest: it was thus demand pressure that galvanized agrarian change. In Great Britain, production and productivity rose to such an extent that scholars have labelled the phenomenon ‘the 412



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agricultural revolution’. In the Low Countries, scholars have kept to the much more modest term ‘agricultural evolution’. The agro-systems that developed in the two regions exhibited by and large similar features: an increasing use of input (manure and ­fertilizers, seeds, farm tools and the first machines), high capital intensity, very high yields, and growing market dependency. Certain scholars argue that the enhanced agrarian performance laid the foundations for the Industrial Revolution. However, the growing demand for food was not met solely through domestic agricultural output. Great Britain, for example, imported large numbers of agricultural products and large quantities of foodstuffs from her colonies and from the North Sea area. The Netherlands and Denmark, for their part, developed from the second half of the nineteenth century on an export-oriented growth strategy for their livestock farming and horticulture, the major customer for their products being the London metropolis, whose population had grown to 2.3 million by 1850. The more peripheral regions of the North Sea area, such as Denmark, southern Sweden and Northwest Germany, then also began to experience a process of demographic and agrarian growth that had the same underlying features. During the twentieth century, demographic growth and urbanization proceeded apace, both in the North Sea area and elsewhere in Europe, as well as in the rest of the world. The effect of this on market demand for food and the organization of the entire agro-food chain was simply spectacular. Worldwide, by the end of the ­millennium, more people were living in an urban environment than in a rural, though it has to be said that this had been the case in the Low Countries since the second half of the eighteenth century. Until the 1950s, agrarian expansion in the North Sea area still occurred largely within the traditional agro-system of mixed farming, being accomplished by the escalating use of fertilizers, animal feed and simple machines. Thereafter, however, the modernization process accelerated rapidly, characterized by economies of scale, far-reaching mechanization, specialization and intensification. Playing an unmistakeable part in this was the Common Agricultural Policy, which, between 1960 and 1990, drove farmers in the direction of greater output and cost efficiency in the service of relatively low food prices and abundant supply. Farming businesses became ever more capital-intensive and ever more dependent on other links in the food chain. Total factor productivity rose with an equal or diminishing use of production factors, particularly a reduction in the area of agricultural land and a reduced recourse to labour (which, indeed, had become very expensive). However, there was an obverse to this ‘green revolution’ that generated spectacular yields, namely the negative effects on the landscape (erosion being one), on animal welfare, on energy consumption and on public health, due to the massive use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, and of drugs in cattle breeding.

13.5  Trade flows and networks of exchange Today, the agro-food market of the North Sea area exhibits a strongly international character. During the past decades, and even centuries, all links in the food chain have become part of the progressive process of globalization, within which both 413

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raw materials and consumer goods circulate. Association with exchange networks for food has brought advantages for both extremities of the chain, i.e. farmers and ­consumers. Farmers are able to shift their surpluses and to specialize according to ­market ­preferences. Thanks to the trade flows, consumers in towns and (proto-)industrial regions can enjoy greater food security and more stable prices. During the Carolingian period, the great secular and ecclesiastical estates were an important motor in the formation of trading networks. The growing importance of landed estates, which were at the same time the basis of political power, led to ­inter-regional and even long-distance trade flows and networks of exchange, ­especially for wine and grain, the pre-eminent foodstuff and the most important arable crop until some way into the nineteenth century. Big landowners generating surpluses sold them or exchanged them for what they did not produce themselves. In this way, according to Devroey et al. (see chapter 2), a limited form of specialization came into being already in the Early Middle Ages. To the west of the Rhine, among other places, extensive farming dominated, with large farms focusing on the production of grains, wool and linen. In the Mosel valley and Alsace, the Paris area and the Bourgogne region, vineyards multiplied. Population growth and urbanization during the High Middle Ages promoted the expansion of trade networks and prompted lords and town authorities to invest in infrastructure works, such as granaries and bridges. Overland transport, however, remained a laborious affair, slow and expensive; there were few roads and they were poorly maintained. Despite frequent problems with water levels, the preference during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period was to use rivers and certainly coastal waters to transport goods. Ships, of course, could carry great quantities, which resulted in favourable transport costs. It was (and still is) precisely this that represented (and represents) one of the biggest trumps of the North Sea area, with its long coastline intersected by numerous navigable rivers offering convenient access to the hinterland: among others, the Scheldt, Meuse, Loire, Seine, Thames, Elbe, Weser and Rhine. During the Early Middle Ages, there were already intense trading contacts between, for instance, ports in southern and eastern England, Normandy and the Low Countries, between small towns on the east coast of Scotland and Scandinavia, and between Wales and a range of ports in the south and east of Ireland. Improvements to the transport infrastructure allowed transport costs to fall and trading circuits to expand. In thirteenth-century England and Denmark, the growth of the stock of horses and the spread of the horseshoe and the harness prompted a sharp expansion in horse transport. In the Late Middle Ages, Denmark had a genuine system of professional carriers driving wagons on firmly established routes between towns and across the Danish border to northern Germany (see 3.1 and 11.1). As regards maritime transport, coastal trade in the North Sea area, from northern France to Scandinavia, benefited from the development of larger and more efficient types of ship, such as the cog or cogge in medieval times and the fluit in early modern times. All this meant that the command economies of the larger demesnes and estates could sell to more distant markets. Towns situated along the great trading routes, whether these last were terrestrial or maritime, developed into important centres of exchange. Some market places handled 414



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a wide range of goods; others were specialized in specific products, as in the case of Cologne, which, during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, was the central market place of Northwest Germany for wine. Cologne merchants bought vintages from villages of the Upper Rhine and stored them in the town for the provisioning of the town itself and the entire region, as well as for export to the Baltic region, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and England. In Scandinavia, the annual markets of southern Skåne, for example, were, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, major places of exchange for foodstuffs and many other products, due to the trade networks that proliferated in the Baltic region and extended further to Flanders and England. This international trade in turn had an important impact on east-Danish agrarian production (see 11.1). Interacting with each other in such exchange circuits were players of all sorts – landlords, farmers, brokers, wholesalers, retailers, consumers and others. For a long time, a central role in the development of agro-food trade was played by abbeys and monasteries, the landed nobility and prosperous citizens. They had the capital and the know-how to invest in market-oriented production segments and had the necessary storage facilities to enable them to speculate on when to place their products (grain, for instance) on the market at favourable prices (command economy). Preserved records from the Early Middle Ages indicate that monasteries were already acting very professionally in that respect, estimating the possible surplus, following price trends, calculating transport costs, etc. Large farmers were truly market players, who sometimes made use of middlemen or participated directly in international trade through dependant merchants or seigneurial agents. Independent merchants, too, operated in such exchange circuits, particularly out of towns and coastal ports. What has not to be underestimated, moreover, is the dynamic provided by ­peasants, even outside the framework of the feudal economy. Indeed, far from everyone in ­village communities produced all that was required. Rural households were obliged to purchase certain foodstuffs – salt, for example – but also looked to sell any surplus, if only to have sufficient cash to purchase a few artisanal items, such as tools and furniture. Peasants took their surpluses to local markets, such as the small Danish beach markets that were a feature of the Early Middle Ages; they sold dairy produce or vegetables at weekly markets in the towns; they went to the large annual fairs, such as that of ­Saint-Denis near Paris; they negotiated with itinerant merchants or exchanged products with fellow-villagers. The specific character of trade flows and market places was to a large extent dependent on the nature of the products in question. Perishable foodstuffs, among them milk, vegetables and fruit, could be marketed only over short distances. Until some way into the nineteenth century, furthermore, the means of transport and the conservation techniques available limited the distance that fresh meat, fish, butter and eggs, too, could be carried. Grain, salt and wine, on the other hand, had been objects of intensive long-distance trade in core regions of the North Sea area since the Early Middle Ages. As bulk goods, they could be transported relatively easily and cheaply along rivers and coasts. The trade in cattle on the hoof, too, is a striking example of long-distance exchange, regional specialization and the division of labour in the North Sea area 415

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during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. The trade in grain and cattle (this last addressed in more detail below) also provides an illustration of the growing complexity of the agro-food chain and the widening gap (also geographically s­ peaking) between producer and consumer. The trade in cattle on the hoof was conducted from north to south, from Denmark to Germany and the Low Countries, and flourished between the mid-fifteenth century and the end of the eighteenth. Stock farming in the northern Danish coastal regions, though, had been for much longer the source of supplies of salted meat, pork, fat and hides to such northern-German towns as Lübeck, Hamburg and Lüneburg. Around 1500, the trade in livestock was sharply boosted by the rising demand for meat in the Rhineland, parts of Westphalia, and the Low Countries, where increasing prosperity opened the way to greater consumption of meat. The trade network adapted itself and Danish and Schleswig spring-sold oxen came to be grazed in the marshes of Northwest Germany, Oldenburg and Holland, near their final consumers in the towns of the Low Countries and Germany, down to a line stretching from Antwerp to Aachen, and south to Frankfurt-am-Main and Dresden. This particular trade was conducted through a dense network of specialist intermediaries and cattle markets (including Münster); via that same network began a contra-traffic of piglets and ham from Westphalia to the coastal marshlands. With the eighteenth century, though, came a decline in the cattle trade, chiefly because of the realignment of agriculture towards grain and dairy farming. Contrasting with this trade network was the situation in Sweden, where a closed market was created at the beginning of the sixteenth century, controlled by the Crown. In early modern Sweden, cattle from all over the country were driven hundreds of kilometres to the consumers of the mining areas in central Sweden and to Stockholm. A striking example of the progressive integration of markets is offered by the grain trade. Since the thirteenth century, the Low Countries had been importing considerable quantities of grain from, among other places, Normandy, Artois, Picardy, and even England. In the fifteenth century, Holland was already virtually – and uniquely – entirely dependent on grain imports, with the result that her supply area had several times to be extended. From the early sixteenth century, her merchants consequently began to draw in supplies (especially of rye) from the Baltic region, which led to price integration between the Baltic and the Amsterdam market, and to the formation of a larger, north-European grain market. Amsterdam merchants even dominated the international grain trade from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. During the sixteenth century, 11 000-13 000 tons or about 8-10 per cent of total Baltic exports were shipped off annually to Amsterdam. This may appear to be a relatively modest proportion, but it could be sufficient to create local food tensions: in 1624, for example, a grain riot broke out in the North Jutland town of Ålborg, where craftsmen stormed the town hall and complained that the grain they needed had been loaded into Dutch vessels. It is precisely for this reason that governments have always tried to control the supply of basic foodstuffs. In Holland herself, the import of grain meant that farmers could specialize in dairy products. An additional feature of the grain trade was that it provided the raw material for grain-processing industries, which included export-oriented breweries and jenever distilleries. 416



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A well-functioning agro-food market could thus enable (basis) food to be brought in from elsewhere, in order to free labour for artisanal and tertiary activities. Historians and geographers have in the past wondered how towns and (proto-)industrial regions could provision themselves. Given the high transport costs and the limited possibilities of preserving food, the length of supply lines was necessarily limited until the emergence of the technological innovations of the nineteenth century. According to the model of the German economist Johann Heinrich von Thünen (1783-1850), rural and urban centres, where market demand is great, would be provisioned from various production zones ranged around them in concentric rings. Research conducted for Caen in northern France in the eighteenth century showed that von Thünen’s model did indeed hold good. The closest production zone provided vegetables, fruit and dairy produce; the second, with woodland, provided fuel, among other things; the third, (bread) grains and other arable products; the fourth and farthest, live stock. The fact remains, though, that larger cities, such as Paris and London, appear to have developed a more complex supply network even before the industrial era. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, London was being provisioned chiefly from within a radius of twenty miles of navigable water. It was within that area that London cornmongers sought out their grain, buying it chiefly from episcopal, lay and royal demesnes. As its population increased, London necessarily had to broaden its supply zone and to have recourse to a more complexly organized food chain. A notable feature of sixteenth-century London was the growth of market gardens in suburbs to supply the capital with fruit and vegetables. As Chartres points out, that was probably the first and most intensive, inner ‘von Thünen’ zone of specialization in the British Isles (see 3.3). During that period, there was also a boost to the still artisanal food industry and retail trade, with a substantial increase in the number of butchers, bakers, fishmongers and brewers in English towns. In the second half of the eighteenth century, a further and impressive expansion of the British capital’s supply system got under way. The concentration of a swelling citizenry, many among which, moreover, enjoyed more than average purchasing power, required a nationwide and even internationally and inter-continentally oriented agrofood market. London and in turn industrial Great Britain thereby exercised a great influence on the agriculture and agro-systems in the rest of the North Sea area, especially in the northern part of the Low Countries and Denmark, from where, indeed, the metropolis drew its provisions of, among other things, butter, bacon, vegetables and fruit – an example, thus of farmers learning to produce for foreign markets. A great deal of attention is given in academic writings to this internationalization of the agro-food market, but recent research on, among other places, Westphalia, indicates that rising domestic demand provided an equally important boost to agricultural growth and the integration of previously highly fragmented regional markets. Between 1750 and 1900, population also increased in rural areas where there was successful (proto-)industry. In these areas, too, the food market expanded and became commercialized. In other words, the development of a modern food market did not spring solely from the dialectic relationship between town and c­ ountryside, but also from the dynamism generated in certain rural areas, examples being the 417

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mining localities of Belgium (Wallonia), Germany (the Rhine-Ruhr area) and northeastern France. However, it was only when transport became quicker, more efficient and cheaper, and trade barriers were dismantled that the long-distance trade in foodstuffs could expand. From the second half of the eighteenth century, the ‘enlightened’ ­governments of north-western Europe gave impetus to the construction of metalled roads, the ­cutting of canals and the channelling of navigable rivers. Private entrepreneurs also contributed to this, particularly in Great Britain. This was followed from the 1830s on by ­construction of an elaborate network of railways, first in Great Britain and Belgium, and thereafter in other west-European countries. As a result, perishable goods, too, could henceforth be transported over longer distances. Transnational and inter-continental transport options increased further with the development of the steamship, and trams became important in providing a rapid link between villages and towns and the railway network. Communication techniques – daily newspapers, the post, telegraphy and telephony – began to proliferate, enabling information about goods and prices to be made available more cheaply and rapidly. In other words, the agro-food market of the North Sea area was able to benefit from declining transaction costs, which in turn boosted market integration, as exemplified by the convergence of the prices of such food products as grain: in 1870, wheat was 58 per cent more expensive in Liverpool than in Chicago; by 1913, the differential had narrowed to a mere 13 per cent. A very influential factor in the dismantling of political barriers to international trade was the food crisis of the 1840s and early 1850s. This last subsistence crisis in Western Europe, brought about by consecutive, failed potato and grain harvests, forced governments to abolish import restrictions and prompted them to turn to the principle of free trade. From the 1870s, the liberalization of the agricultural market was complete in most Northwest European countries. Its impact on agriculture and all other links in the food chain was far-reaching. In the 1880s, farmers in the North Sea area started to suffer under the competition from grain growers in North and South America, Australia and the Russian Empire. The price of grain, and consequently of bread, too, plummeted, particularly in the countries that took few, if any, protectionist measures, such as Great Britain and Belgium, which latter saw the price of bread cut by half between 1880 and 1895. On the other hand, the sharp increase in the supply of food from all continents led willy-nilly to the disappearance throughout Northwest Europe of the Malthusian tension between population and local food production, at least until the First World War. But it was not only bread grains that were the subject of intercontinental trade. Through such international ports as Antwerp, Liverpool and Hamburg, a varied range of agricultural products and foodstuffs poured into Europe: rice, maize, sugar, oils, fresh and frozen meat, exotic fruit and more besides. The international trade in food increased from 4 million metric tons in the 1850s to nearly 40 million by the eve of the First World War. Most of this trade was conducted between Western Europe and European-settled areas overseas, in particular the United States and the colonies. Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany systematically mobilized their colonies to provide in greater or less measure what they required by way of food supplies and raw products for their food industry. The overseas territories themselves 418



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specialized in specific products: great quantities of tea came from Asia (Ceylon), cocoa, coffee and palm oil (for the production of margarine, among other things) from Africa, rice from Japan and Brazil, and so forth. Europe, for her part, shipped other specialist products to the colonies, including canned vegetables, fruit and meat. From the 1880s on, the agricultural economy of the North Sea area in fact evolved from a traditional production system, in which crop farming (grains, potatoes) was paramount, to modern commercial, factory farming, in which stock raising and horticulture, as well as the food industry occupied a growing place, as borne out by developments in Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium, too. In Belgium, the level of self-sufficiency in respect of bread grain fell from 63 per cent around 1880 to barely 28 per cent around 1910, whereas the country was virtually totally self-sufficient as regards meat and butter, and produced a slight surplus of eggs. The First World War and its aftermath, however, served to place a severe curb on the international trading of foodstuffs. Thereafter came the downward pressure on agricultural prices exercised by the worldwide expansion of agricultural production during the later 1920s. Then the economic crisis of the 1930s struck, hitting not only agriculture, but also industry and the financial sector, and prompting the countries of the North Sea area to turn once again to protectionism. The internationalizing of the agro-food market faltered: according to Giovanni Federico, the international trade/ gross output ratio for all agricultural products went up from about 5 per cent in 1870 to about 15 per cent in 1913, but by 1938 had not risen beyond 16 or 17 per cent. It was only after the Second World War that the globalization of the agro-food market gained fresh impetus, due to new forms of international co-operation, of which the Euromarket is the most notable example for the North Sea area. Farmers in this area started to orient themselves towards what, for them, was the most interesting market – whether national or international. It was in this way that, in Belgium, for example, the distinction between Flemish and Walloon agriculture broadened. In more heavily populated Flanders, farmers began to concentrate on intensive livestock farming (pigs and poultry) and horticulture – an additional reason for this being the scarcity of ­agricultural land and the ease of supply of feedstuffs via the ports of Zeebrugge, Ghent and Antwerp. Walloon agriculture opted for arable farming and extensive livestock farming. With the coming into operation of the European Economic Community (EEC), the mixed type of farming went into rapid decline. The tendency to specialize boosted the mutual dependence between, on the one hand, agriculture and, on the other, the ancillary and consumer links in the agro-food chain; such input as seeds, fertilizers, animal feed and technical equipment were purchased from specialized firms. Today, numerous farmers concentrate on a single component of agricultural production – keeping sows and the consequent fattening of pigs, for example; the entire business of meat-processing and distribution is in the hands of subsequent links in the chain. In this way, farmers have become just another component in the complex, international agro-food business with its big multinationals, such as Nestlé, Kraft Foods, Unilever, Campbell’s, Danone, Walmart, Delhaize and the like, with which they have little, if any, say. At the same time, the association between the farmer as producer and the consumer as final link in the chain has evaporated. 419

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It was not long, however, before a reaction manifested itself. While, since the 1950s, the agro-food market has become steadily more international and world cuisine has gained in popularity, there has been a growing respect on the part of the consumer for local agricultural products and artisanal methods of preparation, the produits du terroir. In this reaction, France has been in the vanguard. Since the Late Middle Ages, she has had a tradition of labelling quality products with the name of their terroir. The legal recognition of appellations d’origine contrôlée (AOCs) began with French wines during the inter-war period, followed by cheese sorts from 1955 onwards and, later, even further types of food. Other national or regional governments, as well as marketing services, picked up on this tendency; initially, this was for economic reasons (support for their farmers, the promotion of tourism), but ecological reasons, too, began to come into play. Moreover, European agricultural policy has awakened awareness of what a local region has to offer: since 1992, indeed, the European Union has been introducing quality labels for regional products (see 5.3 and 6.3).

13.6  Market policies for food: quantity and quality Nowadays, for the majority of households in the North Sea area, there is no longer a worry about waking up and wondering whether there is sufficient food in the house for the coming day, let alone for the coming days, weeks or months. The agro-food market is now to such an extent internationally oriented and operates so efficiently (save in very exceptional circumstances, as in the case of the two world wars or the volcanic eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull in 2010, which paralyzed aviation above large swathes of Europe) that regional shortages can be made good by importing from elsewhere. Thanks to the high level of prosperity, moreover, even small to moderate increases in consumer prices are no longer problematic for the majority of households. It was once different. Around 1900, the average Dutch household was spending approximately half of the family budget on food and drink. In the 1960s, the proportion was still about 35 per cent, whereas today it is barely 12 per cent. Until the second half of the nineteenth century, it was the size and quality of local and regional harvests that determined whether there would be hunger or abundance, whether food would be cheap or expensive. Moreover, trade circuits were restricted geographically, the volume of foodstuffs traded was limited and food markets were only to a slight degree geared to each other; only the elites had the know-how and means to build up any reserve of stocks. In such compartmentalized economies, it was no easy matter to deal with substantial shortages. And it was not only weather conditions that could influence agricultural output negatively, but also social and political turmoil, wars, and epidemic and epizootic diseases. Then, too, most foodstuffs were perishable. In short, food was an uncertain factor. It should therefore come as no surprise that, since the Early Middle Ages, big religious and secular landowners, and urban and regional authorities had kept a wary eye on harvest expectations and the extent of food stocks, doing so as a means of estimating their income and of obviating famine (see also the volume Social Relations: Property 420



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and Power). During the Carolingian period, indeed, the agro-food market was already being controlled by the Crown and the ruling elites, who organized supplies, supervised price and quality, and guaranteed the legality and uniformity of weights and measures. Nevertheless, this did not mean that all trade in foodstuffs was conducted according to official regulations; at the periphery of the empire, where the power of the king and nobles was less perceptible, ‘illicit’ markets dominated by local notables flourished (see 2.5). The strong growth of towns in the North Sea area of medieval times made the availability of food a matter of major concern for urban governments and resulted in strategies to control the import of food supplies and the export of surpluses. Where possible, towns invested in the establishment of storage facilities (particularly for bread grain) and applied a broad range of juridical tools to ensure the inward flow of food. They also laid down staple obligations and prohibited rural markets. There was indeed severe competition between towns and rural areas to secure an adequate supply of agricultural products, certainly so for such densely populated regions as the Low Countries. In the so-called ‘Golden Delta’ (Flanders, Brabant, Zeeland and Holland), the average distance between (urban) marketplaces was no more than 25 kilometres. During the fourteenth century, the town of Ghent, for example, implemented a regulation requiring all grain originating from the south (i.e. from the regions of Artois, Hainaut and southern Flanders) to be transported to the town by the town’s own bargees and a quarter of that grain to be sold on the town’s own grain market. Additionally, the town’s bakers, brewers and other local consumers had precedence over merchants in purchasing their supplies (see 7.2), indicating that the interests of local producers and consumers were paramount in this strictly organized food system. The manner of selling foodstuffs was also strictly regulated in many places: selling on the basis of samples, for example, was forbidden, as was buying on credit. Visual appraisal of quality and direct price negotiation constituted the leitmotivs of the medieval and early-modern food market. The public authorities kept a close eye on trade in foodstuffs, in order to combat fraud and to protect public health. There were four common forms of deception: the doctoring of food to mask deterioration or low quality, falsifying the agreed weight (of bread, for instance), lying about the origin of products, and agreements between traders to drive up prices. Where inspectors noted infringements, the products tampered with could be impounded and then distributed among the poor or destroyed. Furthermore, it was not only the authorities that supervised the operation of the agro-food market; also active in that respect were town guilds, such as those of the fishmongers, the bakers, the butchers and the brewers. Important to note here, too, is that commercial trustworthiness was a major theme in medieval and early modern theology and a moral standard among the people. Lastly, landlords and public authorities were able to exercise substantial influence on the food chain via the imposition, increase or decrease of particular taxes. A good example of this was the gabelle, a tax in France on the production and trade of salt. Normandy and Brittany were both livestock-farming areas, but Brittany alone was exempt from the gabelle, with the obvious consequence that she began to specialize in the production of salted butter, which could be preserved for a considerable period 421

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and was thereby an attractive trading product. The dairy farmers of Normandy, for their part, necessarily limited themselves to making cheese. In spite of all efforts to manage the food supply, though, periods of scarcity, high prices and undernourishment were a constant phenomenon throughout the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period at local, regional and even wider level. Public ­authorities then did all in their power to make provision for the most important ­necessities, taking such special measures as the regulation of baking, restrictions on brewing and starch-making, setting prices, the prohibition of exports, and efforts to increase the import of bread grains. In times of less scarcity on the market, though, financial and commercial interests came to weigh heavily. In the late seventeenth century, Great Britain, for example, began introducing Corn Laws aimed at limiting the import of corn and thereby keeping the grain’s domestic market price sufficiently high. However, the rising prices for basic foodstuffs in the North Sea area during the first half of the nineteenth century led to the widespread liberalization of the trade in bread grains. The abolition of the Corn Laws in Great Britain (1846) and the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty between that country and France (1860) marked a period of free trade in the North Sea area, a political course that liberal economists had been advocating since the end of the eighteenth century. For a couple of decades after this change of direction, governments paid little attention to the agricultural sector, since the provision of food appeared to be adequately ensured. But when, towards the end of the nineteenth century, increasing international competition sent the agriculture of Western Europe into depression, certain countries (France, Germany) reacted by taking sharply protectionist measures. Great Britain, for her part, maintained the policy of free trade, so as to ensure supplies of cheap, basic food, although she imposed quality and health requirements here and there, an example being the import ban on live pigs, in order to curb their flow from abroad; a consequence of this was that the Netherlands began to export fresh pork (under the name of ‘London piglets’) to the British market. The Netherlands and other countries (Denmark, Belgium) also opted to institute a comprehensive agricultural policy, in order to underpin the reconversion of their agricultural sectors to more profitable branches of production, albeit that this could be accompanied by mild forms of protectionism. The Belgian government, for instance, looked to protect the country’s livestock breeders and burgeoning food industry by imposing a tax on imports of livestock, meat, butter, margarine and canned goods. At the same time, governments began steadily more to concern themselves with the quality of food. The steep rise of demand in densely populated localities – and, parallel to this, the increase in the number of small and large entrepreneurs in the food sector – had in fact a downside, more particularly the temptation to sell goods of inferior quality or contaminated, and to resort to fraud. New production processes also offered opportunities for fraud, one example being the mixing of expensive butter with ‘artificial butter’ – i.e. cheap margarine – to be then sold as ‘real’ butter. It was against this background that, during the late nineteenth century, the first major laws came into being regulating the production, trading and sale of foodstuffs for humans and animals. 422



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During the 1914-1945 period, government intervention in the European economies increased by leaps and bounds, and necessarily extended to the agro-food market. It was a period that has sometimes been described as the age of the ‘primacy of policy’, and one in which highly regulated agricultural markets came into being. The food shortages and hunger that marked the two world wars, the instability of the agro-food market during the 1920s and the Great Depression of the 1930s drove the governments of the North Sea area to radical intervention in the agro-food chain; this included food-rationing during the wars and thereafter the introduction of minimum prices, import restrictions and export subsidies – a set of measures against which those governments’ protectionist tariff policies of the end of the nineteenth century paled into insignificance. After the Second World War, the countries of the North Sea area were once more confronted with food shortages and high food prices, exacerbated by a lack of hard currency with which to purchase supplies elsewhere. This prompted their governments once again to zealous advocacy of self-sufficiency through, for example, the guaranteeing of minimum prices and the imposition of high import duties on such basic foodstuffs as bread grain. To a certain extent, these national systems of market regulation anticipated the variable-levy system established from around the late 1950s and the early 1960s by the EEC as the core of its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). It is worth recalling that five of the six countries that lay at its origin belonged to the North Sea area. Within just a short time span, European agricultural policy resulted in an impressive expansion of intra-European trade in agricultural products and foodstuffs. Concurrently, the EEC member states together became again self-sufficient as regards the majority of their food requirements. With the use of recommended prices, intervention prices, subsidies, import restrictions and export refunds, indeed, the Euromarket bred an unprecedented growth of production. Commercially minded farmers came no longer to base their business decisions solely on signals from the market, but also on the opportunities that the agricultural policy offered them. From the late 1970s on, criticism of this expensive policy began to swell. Was it still justified to encourage the production of butter mountains and wine and milk lakes? Was it justified to offload surpluses at dumping prices onto external markets, more particularly developing countries, and thereby dislocate the operation of local agro-food markets there? It is well worth noting that Europe’s share in world exports of agricultural products grew from 31 per cent in 1959-1966 to 44 per cent during the final years of the twentieth century. During the 1990s, partly under pressure from society and consumers, the CAP underwent a change of direction. Thenceforth, farmers were encouraged to produce less and to pay greater attention to quality, food safety, ecological imperatives, the landscape and animal welfare; at the same time, the production-oriented support measures for agri- and horticulture were cut back. In consequence, the share of agriculture in the total EU budget fell from about 75 per cent around 1980 to approximately 40 per cent around 2010. Since the outset of the twenty-first century, the European agro-food market has been more exposed to internal and global market movements, but nevertheless remains protectionist. European agriculture is second to only US agriculture as an exporter of agricultural products. 423

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13.7  Preserving, processing and retailing In pre-industrial times, it was the rhythm of the seasons that determined what food was available. Farmers and their wives attempted to broaden the supply of fresh food by, for example, growing various types of bread grain and vegetables whose moments for harvesting or picking were staggered. However, techniques for preserving food and drink for any great length of time remained limited; they also altered the taste. In all regions of the North Sea area, it was usual among households and artisanal ­entrepreneurs for food to be smoked (meat and fish), dried (vegetables, fruit, meat and fish) or pickled (meat, fish, vegetables and fruit); milk was turned into butter or cheese, and fruit could be used to make jam, syrup and eventually cider or calvados. Processing food to preserve it not only ensured a more or less continual supply of it, but also created an opportunity for rural households to turn an extra penny by marketing the end product themselves. From as far back as the Early Middle Ages, the processing and selling of foodstuffs was primarily the task of women, side by side with their role in the business of farming and the household. Throughout the North Sea area, it was the farmers’ wives that maintained the vegetable garden, looked after the poultry, did the milking and prepared the dairy products. Women baked bread and for a long time also brewed beer. They took their wares to market or peddled them from house to house, wares that included butter and cheese, chickens and eggs, sausages, dried fish, fresh vegetables, fruit and herbs. The number of female traders that travelled each week or several times a week by foot and later by tram from outlying rural areas to the bigger market centres, such as Covent Garden in London, could run into the hundreds or even a couple of thousand (see 4.1). Larger-scale, commercial food-processing activities became established in the vicinity of monasteries, landed estates and in the towns, i.e. in places where demand and supply came together and there was sufficient capacity to store raw produce, process it and sell the resulting products. A crucial element in the provision of food in the North Sea area during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period was the flour mill. Hand mills were often operated by women, but the spread of watermills and windmills served to make milling a man’s task (see 2.2 and 11.3). Archival sources indicate a significant increase in the number of watermills in France from the eleventh century onwards. Windmills began to appear in the late twelfth century and spread during the subsequent hundred years, when a process of cerealization began in tandem with the increase in population (see 5.1). There was a similar development in the other regions of the North Sea area – a little earlier here, a little later there. Domesday Book (1086) registered more than 6 000 watermills in England. In Germany, there was great interest in the construction of seigneurial water- and windmills from the thirteenth century on. Indeed, building a mill was a preferred investment for local aristocrats, the richer burghers and ecclesiastics, who could thereby not only process the produce of their own estates, but also generate additional income; through recourse to the milling right, moreover, they obliged their peasants to have their grain ground in the bannal mill. In this way, the expansion of the mill was also linked to the development of the feudal lordship, and was an indication of cerealization and growing market orientation. 424



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A problematic matter for centuries long was the baking of bread. To save time and energy, grain was consumed in the form of a more or less thick gruel. Any grain could be used to make gruel, as in fact could peas, lentils, vetches, honey, butter and other things, too. During the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, numerous ­households had no oven. In rural areas, bread was baked in the communal village oven or the bannal oven. Townspeople took their dough to the local baker, in the same way that meals could be taken to roast-meat sellers, victuallers or pastry cooks, to be cooked in return for payment. A town contained all kinds of artisan and retailer who processed and sold food, among them bakers, butchers, fishmongers and greengrocers, brewers and brandy distillers. It is often assumed that there was very little change in processing and preserving techniques in pre-industrial times, but the assumption is incorrect. It may be that innovations were less spectacular than those during the nineteenth century and later, but their impact could be substantial. One instance is the spread of better millstones that produced finer flour. Another was the pickling of pork in England from 1700 on; in comparison with traditional salting, this was a much cheaper process, saved time and produced meat that was sweeter and kept longer. It was not only an innovation in taste, but was the basis of an important segment of international trade. Pickled meat was among the food provisions carried by merchant ships and was exported in large quantities to the British colonies on the American continent (see 3.3). During the Early Modern Period, producers and traders also began to pay steadily more attention to efficient methods of packaging that permitted goods to be transported over longer distances with as little loss of quality as possible, as in the case of the packaging of butter in tin-glazed delftware or ‘gallipots’, which English merchants began with in the seventeenth century. Improved methods of preserving and packaging contributed towards an expansion in the long-distance trading of foodstuffs and to a constant increase in the number of potential consumers that could be reached. Regions began to specialize in particular products, selling them to other regions and even marketing them internationally. Dairy farmers from Friesland and Zeeland produced butter, and Normandy and the ‘Land van Herve’ (east of Liège) became reputed for their cheeses. Westphalia had been concentrating on meat processing since the Middle Ages, boasting bacon, smoked meat, salted pork, liver, Mettwurst and trotters, among other things. Westphalia ham became a real luxury product, produced for international markets; its traders made use of, among other things, the trade network established for driving cattle on the hoof from Denmark south. Westphalian pig products also went north, providing the Scandinavian coastal marshlands with piglets, pigs and, above all, ham. During the nineteenth century, food processing came to be more and more an industrial activity, moving from the farm and the artisanal workplace to specialized firms, such as the dairy, the canning factory and the slaughterhouse. A consequence of this was a sharp reduction in the tasks carried out by women on and around the farm, compounded by the fact that wage labour in a factory or the managing of an industrial business by (married) women was viewed with little, if any, favour in the bourgeois culture that predominated. 425

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The new production techniques and machinery required steadily more know-how and capital, which led to a phased process of functional differentiation, economies of scale, standardization and concentration, a process that has continued to this day in all branches of the food industry. The importance of the food industry for the economy is very often underestimated in academic literature, but wrongly. In the first place, the food industry was already generating a great deal of employment and value added in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, it was, until the middle of the twentieth, virtually the only industrial activity that there was in numerous rural villages, taking the form of a local dairy, brewery or distillery. Other of its branches, such as slaughterhouses, were established as a matter of preference on the periphery of towns, i.e. close to their consumer public. From the end of the nineteenth century, technology and science – particularly chemistry – began to play a sharply increasing role in the food industry, with ­engineers, chemists and economists now coming to dominate food processing and even the ­operation of the entire food chain. They succeeded in developing new foods (margarine, for example, was the first, solely industrially concocted edible product), in prolonging the storage time of many foods and improving their appearance (through canning, vacuum packaging, cooling or deep-freezing, and through the addition of emulsifiers, stabilizers and colouring), and in conquering international markets with them. In this way, the seasons and regions gradually began to lose their significance in the c­ omposition of daily food intake. At the same time, moreover, the big food companies began a bitter price war among themselves and to engage in gigantic advertising campaigns to encourage buying among as many consumers as possible. Local products, local recipes and tastes had to give way to what is sometimes called the ‘McDonaldization’ of food. More or less parallel with the industrialization of food processing arose a new ­distribution system. The pre-industrial system based on direct selling (by farmers, their wives, and such tradesmen as bakers), wholesale buying and a network of weekly markets, supplemented by peddling had reached its ceiling. The rising purchasing power of the middle classes, including their lower ranks, was bringing with it a greater and more varied demand for food. This translated in the nineteenth century into a steep increase in the number of markets and market days in both town and countryside, as well as into a continual expansion in the number of general and specialized food outlets, among them not only bakers, butchers, dairy shops, greengrocers and colonial stores, but also multiple shops, co-operatives and supermarkets. In turn, however, the retail chains drove out the small shops, which were often run by women. By the end of the twentieth century, the consumer in the North Sea area had become a faithful customer of a few self-service supermarket groups offering a standardized range of branded products uniformly packaged. After the Second World War, a few dozen, gigantic, multinational food processors and retailers succeeded in imposing their ‘food i­mperialism’, to the extent that there has been a sharp narrowing of the ­difference between shopping in Glasgow and London, Lille and Brussels, Hamburg and Copenhagen. The trends outlined above also changed the relationships among the links in the food chain: a physical and mental gulf arose. 426



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Increasingly, from the second half of the nineteenth century on, farmers became suppliers of raw produce to wholesalers and processing businesses, not only losing their contact with the consumer, but also steadily losing their clout in the operation of the food chain, as well as their say in their own incomes. Their response was to form ­co-operatives. Family farming businesses joined together to take processing and selling into their own hands and thereby command better market conditions and prices. In the North Sea area, the co-operatives in Denmark and the Netherlands in particular performed exceedingly well. The first Danish dairy co-operative was established in West Jutland (1882), the first Dutch one in Frisia (1886). Dairy co-operatives came to be very powerful players in the market for butter, cheese and bottled milk. The ­co-operative movement spread to other sectors and to all other countries of the North Sea area, partly under the influence of the farmers’ leagues, which, with varying success, pushed ahead with the idea after the Second World War, continuing to this day, as is the case for wine growing in France, for the purchase of fertilizers and livestock feed, and for the sale of fruit, flowers, potatoes and eggs, and more besides. Also springing up were co-operative auctions, co-operative slaughterhouses and co-operatives for the joint use of expensive agricultural machines. Co-operatives, indeed, contributed substantially to the vertical integration of farmers in the food chain, integration that also boosted the production of high quality products answering to the rising demands of (urban) well-to-do consumers. Certain of these co-operative ventures developed during the twentieth century into very big companies operating on an international scale: e­ xamples in the dairy sector are the Danish Arla Foods and the Dutch FrieslandCampina, as well as the slaughterhouse company Danish Crown (see 8.3 and 12.2). In order to compete with other companies, co-operatives had to fall in line with the operation of the market economy, which prompted them to economies of scale and the professionalization of their business. The downside, as became crystal clear after the Second World War, was the loss of say and the declining involvement of their members, farmers and horticulturalists. It is precisely the two extremities of the ever-more-complex food chain – i.e. farmers and consumers – that have come to feel steadily more ill at ease during these last decades with the developments in processing and distribution outlined above. The manipulation of raw produce, the industrially created end-products with their uniform shapes and tastes, and the flashy publicity have raised questions among consumers and ­governments in all countries of Western Europe about ‘authenticity’, quality and health. The declining role of households in the food chain – their increasing recourse to warming up precooked food – has fuelled the demand for more control on the part of government. Indeed, the longer the food chain, the greater the risk of falsification, contamination and deterioration. It is for this reason that we have seen, as mentioned above, legislation on the composition, preservation, preparation and selling of foodstuffs increasing by leaps and bounds, initially within the separate nation states and subsequently within the EU. Parallel with the feeling of food alienation, artisanally prepared local products have found favour again, interest in organic food has broadened and consumers have begun to experiment with vegetable gardens of their own. These new trends among consumers, especially those with a higher income, are in turn exerting an influence 427

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on the agricultural sector. Some farmers have developed alternative production and distribution channels, away from the ‘modern’ food chain; they organize farmers’ markets, run a shop on the farm and allow those interested to pick their own fruit or select vegetables from the farm’s orchards and fields. Operating methods of this sort help to close the gap with the consumer, but serve also and chiefly to broaden profit margins, cutting out, as they do, the middlemen and the supermarkets.

13.8  On hunger and abundance: food consumption For centuries, what appeared on the table was heavily dependent on what local and regional agriculture could produce, taking into account climatological circumstances and the nature of the soil, as well as social conditions and cultural traditions. In a fertile region such as the basin around Paris, the eating culture was different to that in the far north. There could also be significant differences between neighbouring regions and even within localities. In the lowlands of Denmark and in eastern and central Sweden, for example, arable farming dominated during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. In the more mountainous north of Sweden and Norway, livestock farming predominated. In Lapland, the economy was based on reindeer herding. Certain Scandinavian ethnologists have advanced the theory that divergent eating cultures resulted in different human types: thus, the vegetal diet of the lower regions has led in bigger, stronger and slower people, the fish-and meat-rich diet of the north in smaller and quicker people - we take the thesis for what it is worth. But it is clear that the interaction between climate, agricultural system, food supply and population growth exercised an influence on the process of urbanization, which itself had an impact on the last three of those interacting elements. Denmark had a relatively high population density, and a number of larger towns developed there; in Sweden and Norway, that was much less the case. The basis of the eating culture of the North Sea area was for centuries grain, the variety farmers grew depending on the fertility of the soil: wheat or rye, but also barley, millet, oats, spelt or buckwheat. Grain was eaten in various forms, including gruel, porridge and bread. The bread culture spread from the central Frankish areas during the Early Middle Ages, a process that went in tandem with the spread of Christendom (which accorded bread a ritual place) and the expansion of the population (which generated rising demand for basic food). Underpinning this diffusion, were large-scale land reclamation, technological innovation (the adoption of mouldboard ploughs, for instance) and the spread of mills. Both in the countryside and in the towns, grain remained at the heart of the agricultural system and the basis of the daily diet until well into the eighteenth century. Preparing gruel or porridge was a simpler, less energy-intensive and thus cheaper process than baking bread. The fact is, too, that the ingredients and technical facilities for making flour were lacking in many places, as were ovens for baking. Indeed, there are indications that domestic ovens disappeared from rural homes in the tenth and eleventh centuries, in favour of collective ovens, a development that perhaps ran parallel with 428



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a shift in the division of household tasks, as baking bread remained long very much a woman’s responsibility everywhere (see 2.2). In the villages, chiefly simple, plain, flat bread was baked. In the towns, where bakers were active already in the Middle Ages, leavened bread was the norm. The consumption of gruel gradually became limited to smallholders and to the rapidly growing lower strata of the rural population, and during the last century disappeared virtually entirely from the eating culture. For many centuries, low yields and limited trade among regions allowed little ­differentiation in diet. Were the grain harvest to be below expectations or to fail, prices rose and undernourishment or even famine resulted. Food shortages were often the consequence of a combination of failed harvests, political tensions and warfare. Such situations were pretty unscrupulously taken advantage of by certain big farmers, large landowners and merchants to maximize their profits. For its part, the rural population looked to the ritual of prayer and procession to obtain good harvests, though better protection against meagre harvests was offered by the introduction of such innovative farming techniques as the sowing of different varieties of grain, which did not all ripen at the same time and had differing susceptibilities to weather conditions and disease. These were reasons why farmers also planted winter barley, which was harvested in June. Varying according to demand, the price trend of bread grains and the purchasing power of the population, the basic diet was more or less vegetal in character, albeit supplemented with a little meat or fish. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, meat, next to grain, became a more permanent feature of the diet. With the late medieval crisis serving to decimate the population and sending grain prices tumbling, there was scope for an increase in the consumption of meat (cattle, sheep and poultry), fish and other luxury products, such as dairy produce, vegetables and fruit. Indeed, recent research has determined that, in the east of Britain in the Late Middle Ages, it was not only the well-off cleric, noble or burgher who could buy fruit and vegetables. Chartres writes that archaeological analysis of late-medieval urban cess-pits provided evidence of the ‘medieval fruit salad’ urban people enjoyed as part of everyday diet (see 3.2). The democratization of meat was helped by the advance of commercial animal husbandry and the use of common land for grazing. In other regions of the North Sea area, too, larger swathes of the population began to enjoy a more protein-rich and savoury diet during the Late Middle Ages. Archaeozoological research conducted in France (Picardy and Île-de-France), for instance, has shown, on the basis of animal bones, that cattle and sheep were being slaughtered at a younger age in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to meet the demand for young, tender meat (veal being an example). From the fifteenth century onwards, moreover, meat was being divided into smaller portions, indicating that consumers were asking for specific prime cuts. Meat was a symbol of wealth and even luxury, and its consumption was tied to ­culturally determined restrictions. An instance of this was the Catholic Church’s prohibition in the Middle Ages and again more emphatically during the CounterReformation on the consumption of meat and other animal products during the days of fasting - up to 150 days a year (see 5.1). Fish was permitted as an alternative, its consumption peaking during the fourteen-day period of Lent (March-April); together with cheese and (dried) vegetables, indeed, it played an important role during the fast. 429

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However, it was not everywhere easy to obtain: in the pre-industrial period, moving fresh marine fish inland was made difficult by the inefficiency of transport and the perishability of the product in summer temperatures. Dried or salted fish alone could be kept for any length of time, but was less appetizing. Prior to the advent of railways, it took some twenty hours to get fresh fish by coach from Dieppe to the early market in Paris, a circumstance that made marine fish a luxury product. It was for this reason that, in all rural regions of the North Sea area, a great deal of effort went into catching freshwater fish, as well as breeding them in purpose-built artificial ponds; indeed, a number of French regions less suitable for commercial grain growing turned to fish farming. From the seventeenth century on, freshwater fish became more popular than smoked or salted marine fish; in the case of herring, this led to the decline of the ­herring industry. For centuries there had been significant differences between poor and rich as regards diet and eating habits. The elites of the North Sea area were quick to use food and table manners to distinguish themselves from the middle classes and the underbelly of society. The food on the tables of the aristocracy, the high ecclesiastic and the upper middle class was characterized by its abundance, its variety and its less vegetal content. These elites preferred wheat to barley or other bread grains and had access to fresh meat, the less wealthy having to turn to boiled, salted or cured meat. That fresh meat included game (although eating it was more a symbolic act and not a daily occurrence), but consisted chiefly of beef (veal), mutton and poultry. Besides having direct access to a great number of foodstuffs, since these were produced on their own landed estates, elites were also well-placed to offset deficiencies by importing from other regions – butter and certain types of cheese are examples of this – and even from remote territories – as in the case of spices from the Far East, and olive oil, dried fruit and sweet wines from the Mediterranean. Differences between rich and poor were also reflected in drink culture. In all regions (not just France and Germany), elites simply opted for wine, which accounts for the busy trade in wine from the Loire area, the Rhine and Mosel valleys, the Paris district and elsewhere. Beer was the main choice of the people, as cider was in Normandy. In rural areas, brewing beer was generally a small-scale and artisanal activity for ­personal consumption. Big farms in the Southern Netherlands produced their own beer, which they also served to their maids, farm hands and day labourers. In Westphalian cities from the fifteenth century on, spirits were distilled, initially as medicine to cure human and animal ailments, which accounts for it being a pharmacist activity. In the sixteenth century, spirits gained a footing in the countryside, and their consumption was also brought to other regions of the North Sea are by, among others, German mercenaries; this led in the Netherlands to the development of commercial and highly export-oriented jenever distilling. Other novelties to grace dinner tables had a more exotic character, as exemplified by the turkey, which was imported from America during the 1530-1540 period and took France by storm. Specialist turkey-farming quickly got off the ground, resulting in a rapid fall in the (relative) price and turkey gaining a favoured place in the festive meals of the middle classes. Turkey meat was tasty, and a whole turkey set on a festive table 430



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could stand comparison with such other fowl as pheasant or wild duck. It has to be said, though, that eating habits in both the distant and recent past were generally slow to change. In the late seventeenth and the eighteenth century, notable changes in diet occurred in certain regions. The development of proto-industry in England and the Southern Netherlands, among other places, together with the ‘industrious revolution’ in households had a favourable effect on household income and resulted in an increase in the consumption of sugar, tobacco, spirits and the like. This was accompanied by a shift towards higher-protein and fattier foods – veal and pork, butter and cheese – due in part to the strides being made in livestock farming and dairy production. Varied and refined eating became a cult that food writers turned to their advantage as, together with cookbooks, they started to have an influence on eating habits. Gardening treatises taught the well-off about unknown and tasty types of fruit and vegetable, and ­innovation in horticulture, such as improved methods of selection and forcing techniques, brought about a broadening of the range on offer. At the same time, older types of vegetable began to lose their popularity, as in the case of rampion, salad burnet and lovage. In France, all this led to the appearance of a new-style French cuisine with fewer acid sauces and spices, but with native herbs, a wide spectrum of vegetables and fruit, and particular cuts of meat that were accorded specific names. The greater attention being paid by the elites to quality and variety of course provided farmers with the opportunity to specialize in the products sought after. The discovery of the ‘New World’ and increasing contacts with other continents contributed substantially to changes in eating culture during the Early Modern Period. It was in the seventeenth century that, for example, the elites of the North Sea area began to drink tea, coffee and, to a less extent, chocolate; this occurred earlier in Britain and France, which had their colonies to grow the raw products, than in, for instance, Northwest Germany, where coffee- and tea-drinking came into fashion only in the latter part of that century. Coffee became very popular in towns in the eighteenth century, and its consumption spread in the nineteenth to the lower classes and to the countryside, albeit in the cheaper form of chicory coffee. In Northwest Germany, high taxes on coffee placed a sharp brake on its consumption, besides being a deliberate ploy to maintain the elitist status of the product; indeed, eating and drinking culture served as a strong marker of social differences. The Bishop of Münster nevertheless found himself obliged in 1785 to lift the class-induced restrictions on the consumption of coffee. With the sharp expansion of the population of north-western Europe from the mid-eighteenth century on came fresh tensions between supply and demand. The agricultural sector was able only partially to meet the great demand for basic foodstuffs (i.e. chiefly grain), because the available arable land was insufficient and increases in yields were inadequate. It is within this context that the acceptance of the potato has to be understood. This tuber of South American origin had been known in Europe since the mid-sixteenth century, but found its way onto tables only in times of acute grain shortfall, as in the Vosges, Lorraine and Alsace during the seventeenth century. It was only in the eighteenth century that the potato made a breakthrough and won a fixed 431

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place in arable cultivation and the daily diet in the North Sea area. Potatoes offered the advantage of having a higher caloric yield than grain per unit of area, allowing Malthusian tensions to be survived. However, the lower classes were so dependent on the potato that the failed potato harvests of the 1840s led to a great subsistence crisis in several parts of the North Sea area, albeit the last, saving those of the two world wars. About a million people died in Ireland, but elsewhere, too – especially in Flanders and the Scottish Highlands – the potato famine claimed thousands of victims. During the first decades of the nineteenth century, there was a substantial fall in the average standard of living in Western Europe, certainly in regions where industrialization was proceeding apace and the (urban) population was expanding rapidly. Among workers, the expenditure for food amounted to between 70 and 80 per cent of their total household budget. Their diet was (still) monotonous and mainly vegetal, even not always reaching the caloric minimum. From the second half of the nineteenth century, however – and then chiefly during the final quarter – the food assortment of the urban and rural strata of the common people began slowly to improve in both quantitative and qualitative terms, due in part to the rising level of imports, which resulted in falling prices for basic foodstuffs and an increase in purchasing power. In academic literature, this development is rightly termed a ‘nutritious revolution’. A notable feature in this is that a large section of consumers (chiefly the industrial workers) initially opted for a quantitative improvement in their diet, starting to eat more bread grain and not yet choosing to go for quality and a more balanced food intake. Subsequently, the working classes began to imitate certain food habits of the betteroff, a phenomenon that the German ethnologist Günter Wiegelmann describes as the “time of surrogates”, whereby chicory coffee appeared on the table, together with margarine instead of butter. As soon as the household budget permitted, there was also a rise in the consumption of animal proteins and fats. Furthermore, industrially processed foods now began to reach the table and, besides margarine, also included confectionery and canned goods (vegetables, fruit, meat, fish and soup). The imitation processes culminated in a so-called Verbürgerlichung (‘bourgeoisfication’) of the working classes, whereby, in the first half of the twentieth century, country dwellers in the Low Countries adopted the rhythm of three meals a day that was current in the eating culture of the urban bourgeoisie. In the passing-on of bourgeois eating habits, society played a heavily didactic role. Food scientists, farmers’ unions, the workers’ movements, women’s associations, domestic science schools, newspapers, women’s magazines and cookbooks all exercised a palpable influence. They taught the masses the basic principles of food science (temperature, duration of the cooking process, the importance of vitamins and proteins, etc.) and gave advice on the equipping of the kitchen, the preservation and preparation of foodstuffs, the composition of healthy meals and even table arrangement, besides stressing the importance of more balanced and varied nourishment, including the eating of vegetables and fruit. During the twentieth century, and then principally after the Second World War, the diet of consumers in the North Sea area was substantially broadened and quantitatively improved. More meat graced the table, together with dairy products such 432



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as cheese and yoghurt, as well as exotic sorts of vegetable and fruit (sweet peppers and kiwis, for instance) imported on a more massive scale. Concurrently, there was a significant decline in the share of expenditure on food in the household budget. The fall in (relative) prices for food in the North Sea area relied on the productivist model for agricultural growth and on the modern food industry. Long centuries of recurrent scarcity and a meagre diet were followed by the ‘Golden 1960s’ and thereafter the problem of plenitude, with such negative side effects as food surpluses and health risks (residues of antibiotics in meat, for example), food contamination (by dioxins, for instance) or even diabetes and obesity. Fast food and heavily sweetened soft drinks became the symbol of an eating culture gone off the rails. The reaction set in from the 1980s on, taking the form of a ‘slow food’ movement, a growing interest in self-grown products, artisanal processing methods and recipes from grandmother’s kitchen. Societal organizations shifted their focus to a balanced, but less calorie-rich diet, with fewer sugars, less meat, more fish and a lot of fresh vegetables and fruit, and also began to promote physical exercise. Public interest has grown for ecologically cultivated products, for an agriculture with greater concern for animal welfare and for vegetarian or vegan dishes. This in turn has had a consequential impact on the other links in the food chain, with supermarkets adding biologically cultivated products to their assortments and new shops and chain stores offering solely bio-products. There have been parallel changes in arable and livestock farming, and in horticulture. A number of farmers are reorienting their businesses and concentrating on ecological methods of cultivation and local products, and are again looking to establish direct contact with the consumer. In short, the agro-food chain of the North Sea area is in constant flux, as it always has been.

13.9  Food is food for thought All in all, the modernization of the agro-food system in north-western Europe from the Middle Ages onwards and in recent times far beyond the region’s borders, in North America and further, can be considered a reasonable success, taking into account how many people have had to be fed. In the year 1000, the world had an estimated population of 250 million; by 1500 460 million; by 1800 nearly 1 billion, by around 1960 3 billion; and at the end of the second millennium 6 billion. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, the people of north-western Europe have succeeded in consigning recurrent famine to the past. The post-war ‘green revolution’ – a term that was coined in the late 1960s and refers to skyrocketing agricultural productivity brought about by a shift in input from labour to capital (fertilizers, seeds, machinery, pesticides, etc.) and the spread of know-how and technology across the world – has succeeded, as we regard the situation now, in the early years of the twenty-first century, in providing proper nourishment for a good 80 per cent of the world’s inhabitants. The other side of the picture is, unfortunately, the malnourishment suffered by at least one billion people and the reviving fear that the agro-food system as a whole is reaching its structural limits. Unceasing population growth (to a probable level of 9.15 billion by 2050, according 433

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to the latest prognosis of the United Nations), the scarcity of fresh water in large areas of the world, the unequal distribution of food, the ecological cost of production techniques and fossil-fuel-based transport (the so-called ‘food miles’) all evoke once again the spectre of rising prices, food shortages and dramatic famines. Agro-food markets are in continual flux, and it requires no stretch of the imagination to suppose that agriculture and food, as well as all the intermediate links in the agro-food chain, will come increasingly to be a prime concern of the world’s leaders, if they are not already so today. What an interesting research topic for the historians of the future!

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